


The Heart's Arithmetic

by overmorrows



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Foster Care, Gen, Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicide, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trans Female Character, adorable siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 10:49:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 54,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21506668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overmorrows/pseuds/overmorrows
Summary: Dex has been afraid for as long as he can remember. He's been afraid of parents, foster parents, teammates, friends, but mostly of himself. Maybe it's time to change that.
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 52
Kudos: 500
Collections: OMGCP Big Bang 2019





	1. your paper boy

**Author's Note:**

> And, after four years of work, here it is. The Heart's Arithmetic has been an extreme labor of love. It is also the first piece of fanfic I have published in fifteen years. Thank you to [Ollie](https://tumblr.com/misterstargazer) for partnering with me.
> 
> Fic title from “An Equation for My Children” by Wilmer Mills.
> 
> Chapter title from “Summer in Winter in Summer” by Noah Eli Gordon.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/185571731@N05/49099632006/in/photostream/)

It’s June, so early in the summer that Dex has to wear two flannels on his walk to the docks in the morning. He lifts his hands to his mouth, cups them, and tries to warm them with his breath. There is no sun yet. Shrugging his shoulders up against the cold, Dex tucks his hands under his armpits. He should have just worn gloves, but it’s June and he’s stubborn. Besides, it is a short walk to the docks and to his Uncle Donal’s boat.

Dex has been working on the boat since he was sixteen and still thought his mom would kick him out the day he turned eighteen. It was good money and Dex at sixteen would have done nearly anything for good money. Now, at barely twenty, Dex will still do almost anything for good money but he at least isn’t stashing it in a shoebox under his bed anymore.

From above him, a blackbird lets out a  _ caw _ from its perch on one of the big pine trees that line the road. Dex looks for it, straining his eyes in the pre-dawn grayness, but gives up after a few minutes. The pine trees are too thick and the sky too dark to see anything. Sometimes, Dex wonders why he tries.

It’s only been a few short weeks since the end of the semester. Dex can still feel his anger, and the swiftly ensuing shame, about the coin flip. He knows he overreacted. Dex has lived in a lot of shitty situations. Sharing a bunk bed with Derek Nurse? Wouldn’t even make the top ten. 

He doesn’t know why he reacted the way he did, just that he’d been so upset and frustrated and he’d gotten used to his own space in the last four years. It is a halfass excuse at best, but it is better than the mumbled apology he’d given Nurse.

Dex groans. In two short months, he’ll have to deal with that. For now, he just has to worry about catching lobsters and making sure his sister eats something other than Cinnamon Toast Crunch when he gets off the boat.

The rest of his walk to the docks is quiet. It’s too early in the summer for the tourists to start arriving in the Harbor, but they’ll be there soon. Dex both hates and loves the tourists. They pack the ice cream shop and the small grocery store downtown, but they also allow his mom to pick up extra shifts at work. It’s the only time the family ever has expendable income. Dex brings in money from the boats, his little sister makes a killing babysitting tourist babies, and their mom works the night shift at Edna’s Bed and Breakfast six days a week. For a few weeks every summer, the Poindexters are flush with money. They go out to eat and Dex takes his sister to get ice cream and it is good. Summers have always been good to Dex.

His phone buzzes in his back pocket thirty feet from the dock. Dex considers ignoring it, but his sister, Miley, is only twelve and their mom won’t be home from work for another three hours. 

With numb fingers, he fumbles for his phone and nearly drops it.

It’s not Miley calling, but Nursey.

\---

After the whole dibs flip and before graduation, Ransom stops Dex in the kitchen. 

“You’ve got to, like, not kill Nursey,” Ransom says, giving Dex a Look that clearly expresses disappointment and maybe a little resignation.

Dex doesn’t say anything, just lets the shame bury him deeper. It’s been five days since he’s said more than two words to Nursey, since the dips flip and his own terrible attempt at an apology. He’s never been very good at saying sorry and, when it comes to Nurse, he’s never been good at saying much of anything at all.

Dex opens his mouth to say something in defense, but Ransom cuts him off.

“I know, I know,” he says, waving a hand. “You guys are chill now, Holster already heard that from Nursey. But like, you’ve got to watch out for him. That’s what D-men do. You need to promise to watch out for him.”

And, while Dex would argue that he and Nursey are friends, he wouldn’t necessarily say that he goes out of his way to look out for Nursey. Maybe it has something to do with how they started off as freshmen--at each other’s throats, snipping and misinterpreting, and never really apologizing for what they said at the beginning--but they tended to give each other a wide breadth. Sure, they would study at the same desk in Founders and get coffee at Annie’s, but neither of them ever pushed when one was upset or asked questions that might go down a rabbit hole. They were friends and teammates and, apparently starting in August, they would be roommates. But Dex didn’t go out of his make sure Nursey was doing okay, not like Ransom seems to want.

Dex takes a deep breath and says, “Okay. I’ll look out for Nursey.”

And, after that, Dex doesn’t really think too much about his promise to Ransom. During the first week or so of summer break, Dex watches Nursey’s snapchat stories and likes his posts on instagram. They have a group message with Chowder where they chip each other, but it’s been quiet for the last couple of days. Dex figures it’s because Chowder is busy with his summer job back at Samwell and Dex is busy on the boat and Nursey is busy doing whatever the fuck he does in the summer.

The thing is, Dex doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to look out for Nursey. 

But he kind of wants to learn.

\---

Dex stops walking, right in the middle of the road, and just stares at his phone.

He spent much of May trying to figure out how to have Nursey’s back, but the idea of actually doing something is paralyzing. 

Dex is bad at feelings. That isn’t a secret. The first time Miley came to him, crying about what some girl had called her in the bathroom, Dex had panicked and taken her to the arcade. They played twenty dollars worth of Mortal Kombat and never talked about what had happened. 

He stares at his phone a moment longer, takes a deep breath, and answers it.

Ransom would answer the phone for Holster. Dex would answer the phone for Chowder or Bitty, if they called. This is what bros do. They have each other’s backs.

“Hey, Nurse,” he chirps, “you buttdail me or something?”

There is a moment of silence, one in which Dex really does think he got buttdialed and considers hanging up, before a voice that definitely doesn’t belong to Derek Nurse says, “Poindexter?”

Dex clears his throat and says, “Yeah?”

“Right, sorry,” says the voice. “It’s Farrah, Derek’s sister?”

Dex hums. He’s met Farrah once, family weekend during sophomore year. She’s a dancer or something, if Dex remembers right, and two years older than Nursey. She had seemed nice enough, the one time he’s met her, but that still doesn’t explain why she’s calling him from Nursey’s phone.

Dex clears his throat, “Hi, Farrah.”

There is an awkward silence. Dex doesn’t know what Farrah wants with him. His mind spirals, as it often does, with a number of seemingly plausible theories: she’s going to yell at him about the dibs flip thing or maybe that Nursey doesn’t want to play on the same line as him anymore. 

“Right, Poindexter, this might be weird but could you, like, text Derek?”

Dex blinks. This is not what he expected. 

When he doesn’t answer, Farrah continues, “I have this bootcamp in Texas for the next, like, ten days and our parents are out of town and Derek’s been kind of weird since he came home for the summer. I’m worried, but I’m not like  _ worried _ worried, you know? So I thought I’d ask one of his friends to just check up on him and let me know if he’s okay? And Chris is in a different timezone, so I thought you’d be a better choice?”

Farrah says all of this very fast and Dex is still holding his phone, stopped in the middle of the road, watching his uncle’s boat bob up and down in the harbor. He gets stuck on  _ Derek’s been kind of weird _ . If it had been a hockey bro saying it, he’s have said something about how Nursey is always weird. But Farrah’s worried (but not  _ worried  _ worried, whatever the hell that meant) and Dex’s promise to Ransom still rings in his ears.

_ You gotta have his back _ .

“Yeah, I’ll text him,” Dex says. He doesn’t know what he’ll text Nursey, but he’ll do it. Hell, he probably should have been doing it already but the idea of people wanting to talk to him is still a relatively new concept.

Farrah says, “Great! I’ll text you my number so you can let me know if he gets weirder. And now it’s six and I have to get to fucking LaGuardia in the next hour, so thanks Poindexter for making sure my stupid brother at least talks to someone while I’m gone.”

She hangs up and, a few seconds later he’s adding her to his contacts under  _ Superior Nurse _ and wonder what Nursey has done in the past to make his sister worry worry.

\---

His uncle kicks him off at the docks at noon, before the sun gets too hot, and yells after him, “You tell your mom that we’re having problems with the AC at the shop again, so we need her to come take a look at it when she’s up.”

Dex waves in understanding and starts his walk back home.

Winter Harbor is awake now, full of boats going in and out of the harbor and people mowing their lawns. On his walk, he passes the ice cream shop and old Mrs. Liu touching up the mint green paint on some of the outside tables. He smiles at her and she nods back before returning to her work.

When Dex had first been brought to Winter Harbor, fifteen and angry, he’d hated how everyone knew everyone. It was the smallest town he’d ever lived in, but he’d done it for Miles. And, as it turned it, it was probably one of the best decisions he’d ever made. So, yeah, Dex doesn’t hate how everyone knows everyone in Winter Harbor anymore. He finds it kind of nice, now.

When he rounds the corner, he can see Miley sitting on the porch swing with the family laptop open on her lap. He can see her chewing on one of her braids, a frown on her face.

“Hey, nerdface,” he calls down the street. “You want to get lunch?”

Miley looks up from the computer, a wide grin on her face.

When Dex reaches the front steps, she’s already closed the laptop, ran it back into the house, and stolen a pair of their mother’s flip flops.

“I wanna go to that biscuit place,” Miley says, letting the screen door slam. She takes the three steps in a single jump, stumbling on to the lawn.

“I meant to do that,” she says, righting herself.

Dex rolls his eyes. Miley goes a thousand miles a minute, leaps before she looks, and has broken her arm twice since Dex has known her. It doesn’t help that she’s in that coltish phase of preteendom where your arms and legs are too long and about the size of number two pencils.

He wraps an arm over her shoulder and pulls her into a hug.

“You smell like fish, Liam,” she protests, halfheartedly. Miley is twelve, but she still thinks the world of Dex, something that Dex has never understood but cherishes.

“Yup,” he says, resting his chin on top of her head.

Miley sighs, “I’m gonna smell like fish now.”

“That was the plan.”

She pushes him away lightly, mumbling, “You’re the worst.”

“I’m your favorite brother.”

“You’re my only brother.”

Miley huffs again, crossing her arms over the Samwell Men’s Hockey sweater he’d given her for Christmas after she’d outgrown her old one. She stands just a little below his shoulder now, a far cry from the little pipsqueak he’d left last summer, and seems to constantly forget her sudden height. Just last week, she’d broken the light fixture in her room by jumping on the bed. She still has a butterfly bandage across her forehead.

“Biscuit place?” she asks.

Dex nods. “Yes, we can go to the ‘biscuit place.’ It has a name, you know?”

“Yeah, but the No Wait Dinner is such a tourist name,” she quips, starting the walk down the drive. “And, besides, Mom really likes their biscuits and jam.”

“Bitty’s jam is better,” Dex mumbles, following her.

\---

The next day, Dex texts Nursey after watching the Falconers win game three. It’s the first text he’s sent Nurse outside of group texts since before the dibs flip, as his phone unhelpfully reminds him when he goes to the text thread.

_ “I watched all of the third period from behind my hands,”  _ he types out, deletes, and then types again.

It’s mostly true and a little embarrassing. Miles narrated parts of it for him as they ate leftover not-as-good-as-Bitty’s pie from the dinner sitting on the saggy couch in the living room. He hopes it’s the right thing to say to goad a response out of Nursey.

After five minutes, Dex slides off the couch to sit with his knees pressed to his chest on the floor. He absentmindedly bites the edge of his thumb while Miley cackles into her pre-algebra homework. 

“Shut your stupid face, Miles,” grumbles Dex, unlocking his phone to stare at the little text under his message that still hasn’t changed from ‘delivered’ to ‘read.’

Miley says, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, but you think loud.”

She throws her pencil at him, misses, and grabs a throw pillow from the couch. She flings it at him and hits his head.

“So do you, buttface,” she says. “Stop staring at your phone like a lovesick booger and let me do my homework in peace.”

Dex flushes. He can feel his ears burning, so he picks up the pillow from where it landed on the rug next to him and buries his face in it. He’s worried, not anything else that Miley might think in her stupid preteen brain. Farrah had been worried, and if Nurse’s own sister is worried, than Dex should be too. 

In the last five days, Nursey hasn’t texted any of the SMH text groups (Dex had checked) or made any instagram posts (Dex had checked all three of them, including the one dedicated solely to his cat) or posted on his secret poetry tumblr (which Dex isn’t supposed to know about but does because Nursey broke his laptop, borrowed Dex’s, and left it logged in once when they were freshmen).

“It’s just stupid Nursey,” he says in defense, face still buried in the pillow.

Miley says, “I stand by what I said. Let me live vicariously through you, Liam. I’m homeschooled. My only friends are you, Mom, and Penny from Oklahoma who’s in my virtual history class. I live for the drama.”

“I regret telling you about the dibs flip.”

“No, you don’t,” she says smugly. “I’m your voice of reason. Also, like, I know everything about you so I can tell you that, yeah, you’re the worst at room sharing, but that’s no reason to be a dick about it to your best friend.”

Dex tries not to react to his baby sister calling him a dick. It’s hard, but he’s trying to let her grow up a bit. This year has been hard on both the Poindexter kids. SMH had a bad season, Bitty’d been a hot mess for half the year, and the Haus dryer could only dry one sock when they’d left for the summer. Miley had a worse go of it, but she seems to be taking the whole thing in stride.

“I know,” Dex says instead. “I’m trying.”

“I know that, but does Nursey?”

If Dex is honest with himself, he knows the answer to that. 

When it comes to Derek Nurse, their whole relationship can be summed up in, ‘open mouth, insert foot.’ Dex can’t think of a single time he’s ever managed to tell Nursey what he means without making an ass out of himself. 

When he’d found out that Nursey’s birthday was Valentine’s Day, he’d said he’d gotten his best friend nothing. He’d meant he hadn’t known, but he’d said,  _ nothing yeah nothing _ because he’s an idiot who doesn’t know how words work. Or, more accurately, he doesn’t know how to get words from his brain to his mouth in a way other people understand. 

So, yeah, Dex is trying to be a good friend to Nurse. 

Does Nurse know?

No.

Is Dex going to tell him?

Also no.

His phone vibrates.

“Finally,” says Miley. “Read it, read it!”

He tosses the pillow back at her. It hits her in the face with a satisfying  _ thump _ .

_ “how’d you know falcs won then?”  _ is what Nursey’s text reads.

Dex breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t know what he was worried about, just that it disappeared the second he saw Nursey’s text.

He quickly types back,  _ “Miley gave me the play by play.” _

_ “the nicer poindexter,”  _ Nursey types back almost immediately.

Dex laughs, “Nursey says you’re the nicer Poindexter.”

“Duh! You threw a pillow at my face!” Miley exclaimes.

“You threw it at me first.”

Miley says, “At the back of your head, not your face!”

“Sorry I couldn’t figure out another way wipe that know-it-all look of your face!” Dex retorts, turning back to his phone.

_ “She only did it to get out of math homework,”  _ he sends back.

A moment letter Nursey texts back,  _ “she’s smart too. fuuuuuuuck math.” _

Dex doesn’t bother to reply to that one. Instead, he leans back against the couch and takes a deep breath. Nursey is fine. There’s no reason to be worried, but Dex can’t quite shake the feeling of unease in his stomach. 

\---

On Tuesday, Mom wakes up for her shift early enough to make them all dinner. 

She makes her way down the stairs at 2:13 in the afternoon, hair still up in its scarf.n, almost four hours before she’s due at Edna’s. 

Dex is sitting at the kitchen table, tapping his fingers on the oak wood. He’d texted Nursey after he’d gotten off his uncle’s boat, over two hours ago, and he still hasn’t heard back. He’s opened up Farrah’s contact information three times in the last twenty minutes.

“Nickel for your thoughts?” she asks, making her way to the coffee pot. In the summer, Dex always puts on a pot after he gets back from the docks. 

“Isn’t it supposed to be a penny?”

Mom pauses, her back to him and her head in the refrigerator looking for the half-and-half, and says, “Liam, you know your thoughts are worth more than a penny. What’s got you all worked up?”

Mom has always known when Dex is lost in thought. That first day in Winter Harbor, when he’d stood in this same kitchen with a much younger Miles trying to drag him upstairs to show him his new room, she’d known he was stuck in his own brain. She’d told Miley to go upstairs and grab some board game or something, giving Dex a moment to breath without the stifling excitement of a seven year old. 

There are about six different things he wants to tell her, but when he opens his mouth all that comes out is, “Have you ever been  _ worried _ worried about me or Miley?”

Because, really, that’s what has been weighing on him. He’s been thinking it over for days, wondering what Farrah had meant, and probably making it worse in his head. Dex does that a lot, overthink and make situations worse by living too much in his head.

Mom hums thoughtfully, pauses, and says, “I worry about you two all the time; that’s kind of how caring about people works, kiddo.”

Dex finds that less than helpful but, in his mom’s defence, he hadn’t really asked the question right. He knows what it’s like to really worry about someone. When he’d been separated from Miles after their first placement together, he’d worried about her constantly. He worried about where she’d end up and if they’d treat her good. He worried about who’d fix her hair and make sure she practiced her letters every night. He’d only really been worried worried about her once, when their foster father had found Dex painting her nails and screamed and screamed at them until Miley was crying and Dex was shaking.

Mom walks towards the table, two cups of coffee in her hands. One smells like the hazelnut creamer she likes and the other, Dex knows, is full of enough sugar to give you a cavity.

“What’s eating at you?” she asks, sitting next to him and sliding the extra mug across the table. “And don’t you dare say nothing, I know you better than that.”

Dex smiles as he takes a drink of his coffee.  _ Nothing _ and  _ fine _ were his two favorite words, she’d joked once. When something is bothering Dex, he bottles it up until he wants to hit something or yell. He usually only does the latter and usually only while he’s driving, windows rolled up, so no one can hear him. 

“Nursey’s sister asked me to check in on him while she’s away for the next few weeks,” he says, tracing patterns in the grain of the oak table.

Him mom hums and waits for him to continue. She has her elbow resting on the table, chin in her hand.

When he says nothing, she prompts, “And?”

“She said she’s  _ worried _ worried about him,” he says. 

Then there was the tone of Farrah’s voice, slightly on edge and full of some kind of meaning Dex hasn’t thought about since he was like seven years old and people used to ask after his birth mom in the same way. But he didn’t say that to his mom.

His mom reaches across the table to take his hand, stilling it from its incessant pattern tracing. She gives it a squeeze before letting go.

“You’re a good boy,” his mother says. “How is he?”

Dex snorts, “I have no idea. He’s Nursey. He only replied to my texts yesterday to make fun of me and he hasn’t said anything today.”

“You text him?”

Dex nods and says, “Yeah, a picture of some lobsters. I thought he’d jump on the chance to make fun of me, but he hasn’t.”

Mom nods. She takes her hand back and a sip of coffee, her warm brown eyes on Dex, and purses her lips. Dex recognizes it as her thinking face.

“Text him a question,” she suggests.

Dex asks, “Why?”

“Because when you were giving me the whole silent treatment in the beginning, the only way I could get you to say anything is if I asked you a direct question. ‘Liam, have you seen Miley anywhere?,’ ‘Liam, can you help me carry in these groceries?’. It always worked with you, when you were in a funk.”

Dex raises his eyebrows. A ‘funk’ was one way to describe Dex’s behavior when he’d arrived in Winter Harbor. More or less catatonic was another. So was a hot mess.

She gets to her feet, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder before she heads over to the sink with her empty coffee cup.

Dex pulls his phone out of his pocket and types,  _ Meme suggestions for when the falcs win the Cup? _

He puts it down on the table and waits.

Less than an hour and no reply from Nurse, Miley thumps down the stairs.

“Best day ever!” squeals Miley, wrapping her thin arms around Mom’s waist. She leans over to catch a whiff of the pot of chicken and dumpling soup on the stove, her braids dangling dangerously close to stove.

“Shoo,” says Mom, playfully shoving Miley aside. “It only needs another few minutes. Go sit at the table with your brother.”

Dex waves half heartedly from his spot at their small, round dinner table. His phone is sitting on the table, facedown.

“Boy problems?” coos Miley, sliding into the seat to Dex’s left.

Their mom turns around at that and says, “Miley, you leave him be. He’s worried about a friend.”

“All of his friends are boys,” Miley points out, “so technically boy problems.”

“Not all,” he mutters, eyeing his phone suspiciously. “What about Lardo?”

Miley asks, “Are you worried about Lardo?”

“No.”

“So, it’s a boy problem!”

Dex lets his forehead hit the table and mutters, “Sure, whatever you say, Miles.”

Miley lays her head next to his, her hand resting on his back sympathetically.

\---

When Dex had met Miley, he hadn’t been Dex and she hadn’t been Miley. He’d still called her Miles, though, he’d always called her that. She’d been three and he’d been eleven, living with a foster family and about three other revolving door foster kids. Miley was a fussy toddler who was prone to throwing tantrums and Dex an angry preteen with a penchant for solving problems with his fists. They both got into trouble with their foster parents a lot.

It was Dex’s first placement. It wasn’t Miley’s. 

“I’m a girl, you know,” Miley said one day, age four, as Dex brushed her hair.

Dex just said, “Okay,” and bought her a tiara with the change he found between the couch cushions the next day.

The tiara, as it turned out, was the start of problems.

Later, sometime after Miley had turned five and before Dex had turned thirteen, their foster dad had snatched it out of Miley’s hand and snapped it in half.

It wasn’t long after that that they’d sent Miley along, claiming she was too much to handle.

It wasn’t long after that that Dex had smashed the windows to his foster dad’s car with his hockey stick and been carted off to a group home.

It was much, much too long after that (almost three years) until Leona Poindexter brought them together again.

\---

Nursey does eventually text back his meme suggestions, complete with images. One is a picture of Jack on the bus to an away game from last year with a clipboard and text that reads ‘Netflix and game plan.’

Dex sends back an image of a Canadian goose next to a scowling image of Jack.

_ “Spot the difference _ ,” he texts.

Nursey does not text back again that night, but Dex feels better. 

The next few days pass in a similar fashion. Dex texts Nursey after he gets off work and usually, sometime after his mom leaves for work but before he shooes Miley off to bed, Nursey replies two or three times.

If Nurse finds anything odd about Dex’s sudden desire to communicate, he doesn’t say anything. And, if he did, Dex isn’t sure what he would say. He feels a familiar hot spark of shame when he thinks about Farrah’s phone call and his promise to Ransom. If Dex really were a good bro, he wouldn’t have needed the pressure of Nurse’s sister to keep in touch. If Dex was a good bro, he’d have already been doing it. But Dex isn’t a good bro, at least not to Nursey.

Dex hadn’t really had friends before Samwell. When you’d bounced around different places, it was hard to make friends. He’d had friends when he’d been younger before--well, just before--but they’d figured him out before his dad had and that put an end to his elementary school friendships. When he’d moved to Winter Harbor, he’d been friendly with a few of the guys on his hockey team, but he’d been too worried about his mom kicking him out to let anyone get close to him.

Now, Dex isn’t afraid to admit (at least to himself) that he sucks at the whole friend thing. He always says the wrong thing and he hates to apologize. One of the therapists he’d seen while in foster care had said he didn’t like apologizing thanks to some of the shit his dad had done. Dex thinks that’s bull, but he’d nodded along while she’d told him how bad things didn’t decided his future and past abuse didn’t excuse his actions, just explain them. 

He gets stuck in thought about it on Thursday and decides to text Chowder.

“ _ Am I a shitty friend? _ ” he asks, sitting on the porch swing with an orange Otter Pop.

Miley is in the front yard, trying to get Dex’s old skateboard to roll down their gravel driveway. Mom is at work.

Chowder calls him less than a minute after he texts.

“What did Nursey say to you?” asks Chowder over the phone.

“Nothing,” begins Dex, but he quickly changes it to, “wait, what did he say to you?”

Chowder snorts, “Not much. He just asked if I told you to text him. I told him I didn’t.”

“So he’s not talking to you either?” ask Dex, trying to bury the guilt that, while it hadn’t been  _ Chowder _ that asked him to talk to Nurse, but it had been someone.

“Not really? He sent me some Jack memes and like, a picture of his cat sometime last week,” Chowder says and then adds, “I’m worried. He texted me every ten seconds last summer.”

Dex fights the urge to say,  _ me too _ .

He sighs, drinking the orange juice of the melted Otter Pop from the wrapper. Nursey hadn’t texted every  _ ten _ seconds last summer, but he had texted at least once a day. And he’d updated his instagram just as often. This summer, the last update from Nursey’s instagram is a picture of SMH after graduation. That was almost two weeks ago, now. 

“Yeah,” says Dex, trying to remember some of those breathing exercises he’d been taught when his biological mom died. He’d thought they were dumb as a kid, and he kind of thought they were dumb now, but they helped slow down his hummingbird heart.

“You’re not a shitty friend, Dex,” Chowder tells him in a firm voice. “You are sometimes a dick and you’re bad at apologizing.”

“Gee, thanks, Chowder.”

“You didn’t let me finish!” whines Chowder. “You say shitty things to people all the time, but you make it up to most of us. When you’re an asshole to Bitty, you do the dishes. When you upset me, you help me with my stats homework even though you hate statistics. With Lardo or Ransom or Holster, you fix things up around the Haus. What do you do with Nursey when you’re a dick to him?”

Dex takes a moment to breathe. When Chowder had said he was a dick, it had hurt. But, as it turns out, he might be right. Dex goes out of his way not to use his words to apologize. Just the idea of saying sorry is enough to make his hands start balling up into fists. He tries to say sorry with his actions, but he doesn’t do that with Nurse. He just pretends it never happens and then they get into another fight.

Dex mumbles, “I don’t do anything, I guess, but neither does he.”

“You’re not a shitty friend,” Chowder repeats, “but maybe next time you and Nursey get into a fight you can find a way to make it up to him.”

There is a small (okay, maybe not that small) part of Dex that wants to protest and whine. He wants to complain about being the bigger person, about taking the first step, but he bites his tongue. Miley’s words from the other night play in his head--does Nursey know he’s trying? 

Dex tries to think about it from someone else’s perspective, someone who doesn’t go into zombie-screaming mode anytime another person so much as raises their voice or freeze like a deer in the headlights when someone touched him. 

_ Trauma doesn’t excuse your actions, William _ , said a therapist to him at sixteen, still nursing a long set of stitches under his eye.

He takes three deep breaths--in through the nose for a count of three, hold for three, out for three--and remembers his promise to Ransom.

“Thanks, Chowder,” he says, crinkling the Otter Pop wrapper and stuffing it into his jean pockets.

“No problem, Dexy!” Chowder says. “I’ll keep trying to talk to him too, okay?”

Dex says, “Me too.”

He hangs up his phone.

He has to try harder. He has to show Nursey he has his back.

The next afternoon, he asks his uncle for the rest of the week off. When he gets home, he asks Mom to borrow the truck. Then, he texts Farrah for the Nurse’s home address.

When he throws a duffle bag into the passenger seat of his mom’s 1998 bright green Toyota Tacoma, Miley says what he’d been thinking all day, “This is stupid.”

And it is. It is stupid of him to drive to Nursey’s house in New York City when, one, he hasn’t been invited, two, he hasn’t told Nursey he’s coming, and, three, he’s not sure Nursey wants him there. But Random had asked Dex to have his D-Man’s back and Farrah had asked him to check in on her brother. Chowder had said he sucked at using his words, so what else is he supposed to do? He didn’t know how else he was supposed to look out for Nursey.

“Yeah,” Dex says, closing the driver’s side door, “it is.”

Miley nods and says, “Just making sure you’re aware of its stupidity.”

“Miley,” Mom warns, shaking her head. “Leave him be.”

Miley holds up her hands defensively and says, “If he wants to waste the gas money, fine, but he better at least take some pictures. It’s New York! In June!”

“It’s not a vacation, Miles,” he says with a shake of the head. “I’m just gonna make sure that Nurse is okay, maybe stay a few days if he lets me, and then head back.”

“That wasn’t a no,” Miley says knowingly, smirking.

Dex replies, “If I can.”

Miley punches a fist into her and squeals, “Yes!”

Mom hands him a plastic grocery bag through the open car window.

“I threw in some snacks and my car charger, which I want back when you’re home,” Mom says, reaching through the window on give Dex’s shoulder a squeeze. “Call me if you need anything. I mean it. I don’t care if I’m working, Edna can deal.”

Dex laughs, “Okay, Mom.”

“And text me when you get there, okay?” she continues, her hands knotting in front of her. “Tell Derek we say hi.”

“I will.”

And Dex backs down the gravel driveway and tries not to think too much about what he’s doing.

\---

Dex likes driving. It’s a mindless activity, just busy enough that he can’t think too much about what’s waiting for him in New York, about what  _ worried  _ worried might look like on Nurse.

One of Dex’s last memories of his birth mom is driving. He doesn’t know where they were heading--he was seven, it might have been hockey practice--but he remembers she’d let him sit shotgun and they’d had the windows down, drinking in the weak April sunshine. She’d held his hand, before touching other people made him want to scream, and called him, “My sweet boy,” like she used to. 

Dex has a lot of bad memories from before foster care and a lot of bad memories during it, but this one of his mother always comes to mind when he drives.

\---

Farrah, in her foresight, had given Dex the code to the garage so he doesn’t have to park the truck on the street. Besides, Dex isn’t sure that a car like his is allowed on a street like this one where all the house cost more money than his whole town.

The problem is, after parking the truck, Dex isn’t sure what to do. It seems rude to enter through the garage, so he walks outside and up the front steps.

He rings the bell and waits.

Waiting is not one of Dex’s strong points. Left to wait, he often starts to worry and gets worked up imagining the worst case scenario. It’s one of the many reasons he’s “not chill,” according to Nurse. Dex knows it’s just the way it is for him, but he doesn’t do anything to try and fix it because that would mean changing things and Dex hates change more than he hates how worry gnaws at his belly.

_ Worried  _ worried.

What if Nursey can’t answer the door?

Dex swallows the thought, mouth dry. He’s about to ring the bell a second time when the door swings open.

It’s Nursey who opens it, of course. He’s wearing what Bitty would call lounge clothes and Dex would call pajamas--some band tank top and black sweatpants--and a beanie, even though it’s in the eighties. He has a few days worth of stubble on his jaw and a very fluffy cat with a squashed-looking face under one arm.

Dex wants to cry in relief. And also maybe hit Nursey for not replying to his text messages. But the relief is winning out at the moment.

“What the actual fuck, Poindexter,” he says, and it’s not a question but more of an exasperated statement of disbelief.

Dex tries to smile, but the effort falls flat as he opens his mouth to say, “Hey, Nurse.”

He doesn’t move to let Dex in. Instead, he steps further into the doorway to block Dex’s view into the house. Another time, Dex would have let his anxiety turn into barbs and say something about inviting him in, but he’s trying to remember to try differently where Nurse is concerned. After all, he didn’t drive eight hours to piss Nursey off. This trip isn’t about him, it’s about Nursey.

“Why are you here?” Nursey asks tersely, but wearily. There is something just barely held together about him and it unsettles Dex. He’s never seen Nurse like this, tired and without something cutting to say.

He suppose Nursey has never seen Dex like this, worn thin with worry and watching his words. 

He thinks they might not know each other at all.

“We were worried,” he says, but he’d almost said ‘ _ I was worried _ ,’ which is true but embarrassing. “Me and Chowder.”

Nursey’s eyes are still narrowed, but he takes a step back and lets Dex see into the house.

“Get off my stoop like a sad sack, Poindexter, and get in the house before Zams claws the shit out of me.”

The cat, Zams apparently, mews plaintively and tries to wriggle out of Nursey’s arm. 

Dex does get off the stoop, muttering, “Thanks.”

Nursey closes the door behind him, letting the cat jump to the floor. 

“Invasion of the body snatchers,” Nurse says under his breath as he starts down the white tiled hall. “You following or are you gonna stand in the doorway?”

Dex toes off his shoes, even though Nursey is wearing his, and follows. He tries not to stare at things as he does and tries not to think about all the space, tastefully empty. He definitely doesn’t think about the group homes where he’d shared a room with three other boys that was smaller than Nursey’s ‘doorway.’ 

Nursey stops in the kitchen, leans back against the counter, and says, “Worried? Poindexter, I’m touched.”

There’s something in Nurse’s words that border on sarcasm, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Dex can tell his heart isn’t really in it.

“You look like shit,” Dex says, ignoring the previous comment.

It’s true. Nursey looks like he hasn’t slept since the senior’s graduation, since Dex had caught the shuttle to the bus station and told Nurse to,  _ “actually do something with your summer.” _ The memory brings a new, more urgent feeling of guilt to the surface, but Dex squashes it down. He’d meant it as a joke, but now it makes him feel almost sick. 

“Thanks,” Nursey replies, pushing himself off the counter, “you really know how to make a guy feel like shit in his own home.”

He reaches down to pet the cat, who’d followed them into the kitchen, under the chin. The cat rubs its face on Nursey’s hand and Nursey smiles, just a little, and Dex feels a knot loosen behind his ribcage.

“That’s not what I meant,” Dex defends. “You just look tired. It’s nine at night and you’re still in pajamas.”

“Break’s for staying up too late and not getting dressed,” Nurse says in what Dex could best described as a voice of forced chill and normalcy.

Dex sighs. He doesn’t know what to say that won’t be interpreted as an insult, so he says nothing. Instead, he slides his back along the cabinets and sits crossed legged on the cool tile floor.

“What’s his name?” Dex asks, holding his hand out for the cat to smell.

The cat, mostly white with a little bit of gray on its ears and nose, sniffs Dex’s offered hand tentatively. Then, it pushes gently into his palm and closes it’s big, blue eyes.

Nursey joins him on the floor and says, “Her name’s Zamboni.”

“Zamboni?” Dex laughs, unable to help himself.

Nurse smiles and says, “Laugh it up, Poindexter. I named her when I was eight. You’re lucky her name’s not Fluffy or Snowball.”

“That’s…” Dex begins, but he trails off. He was going to say  _ adorable _ , but the idea of saying that causes the tips of his ears to burn. Instead, he says, “That’s a pretty good name. Better than I would have done.”

“In my defence,” Nursey argues, some of the tightness leaving his shoulders, “she was Zamboni, like, twelve years before the Falcs started calling Jack  _ Zimboni _ .”

The two sit in silence for a few minutes, Zamboni sprawled out on the tile between them. She’s purring, a low sound, and Dex is afraid if he says something he’s going to break the very fragile calm that had settled. But, Dex knows he has to say something.

_ Does Nursey know that? _ Miley had asked, spurring all this.

No.

_ Would you check up on him? _ Farrah had asked, spurring all this.

No, that’s not it either.

_ You gotta, like, have his back.  _ Ransom had said, spurring all this.

Yes. That one.

“You were kind of freaking me out, bro,” Dex says. “Not replying to texts, not posting on instagram. And Chowder said you weren’t talking to him either.”

Dex holds his breath. This is the closest to honest Dex has ever been. He never tells anyone what’s on his mind, let alone Nursey. But, if he wants to make good on his promises, he doesn’t know what else to do. 

“I’m fine,” Nursey says.

He sounds like had Dex, at age fifteen, answering his social worker on the drive to Winter Harbor with a pack of frozen peas held to the side of his swollen face. Nursey was no more fine than Dex had been after Hunter Pucowski and his stupid friends had lain into Dex after a game of shinny. 

Dex knows better than to push at those fine’s. 

“Alright then. Want to catch the Falcs game? I bet your TV is nicer than mine and you can tell me about your memes instead of texting me them.”

There is a beat, a moment where Dex fears that Nurse will say no and send him the eight hours home.

He doesn’t.

“Okay, you missed most of first period. Falcs are up 1-0.”

Dex lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Nursey is okay. Well, maybe not okay, but he’s there and Dex finds himself feeling better than he has in days.

The Falcs win game five and Dex watches the game, perched at the edge of Nurse’s white leather couch, waiting. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for--questions, the other shoe to drop--but he spends more of the game worrying than watching.

“You need to fucking chill, Poindexter,” says Nursey after the game.

Dex makes a strangled noise, but says nothing.

“I mean it,” Nursey says. “If you keep looking at me like that I’m gonna hit something.”

And, because he’s an idiot, Dex asks, “Like what?”

“Like I’m Bitty stress making jam or Chowder sleeping on the green couch,” Nursey says. “We don’t do that shit, Dex.”

“We’re going to be roommates, so maybe we should.”

Nursey turns off the TV where some newscaster had been talking about the Falcons chances of winning the cup. He stands in front of Dex with his arms crossed, more confrontational then he’s been since they were freshmen and really hated each other.

Nursey says, “I don’t want your pity, William. Whatever you think is going on with me isn’t. I’m fine and, in the morning, you can drive yourself back to Poindexterville, Maine.”

“Winter Harbor,” mumbles Dex. “And for fuck’s sake, Nurse, I’ve never pitied you! Look at this place. It’s like a movie set or some shit.”

Dex knows it’s the wrong thing to say, but it’s what comes out of his mouth anyway.

Nursey snorts, “Sure, make this about your weird money issues. That’s always what it boils down to with us, isn’t it? You hate me because my family’s got money and you don’t.”

Dex takes a breath. Yeah, the money thing is still weird for him. When he’d arrived at Samwell, just barely eighteen and only a handful of good eating years on his bones and a lot of shitty experiences bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin, it had been hatred he’d felt. He’d been mad about the years he’d pocketed ketchup packets at school so he’d have something to eat for dinner and the fact that all of preseason he’d had to answer invasive questions about why he’d taken six years ‘off’ of hockey. 

Dex doesn’t hate Nursey now, doesn’t think he ever really did, not once they got to know each other. He might have been using Nursey as a stand in for every asshole who’d called him a throwaway kid.

“I don’t hate you, stupid,” Dex says, which probably doesn’t help diffuse the situation because Nursey, somehow, looks even angrier.

“News to me.”

And maybe it is. Dex hadn’t really thought about it before. Maybe Nursey really does think Dex hates him.

Dex pushes himself up from the couch to cross the room and stand in front of Nursey. Nursey stands up straighter, his arms dropping to his sides.

“Look,” says Dex, “I don’t hate you and if you’re still pissed at me about the whole fucking dibs flip thing, well, I’m sorry. I fucking suck at sharing rooms and maybe I shouldn’t have said some of the shit I said.”

“Maybe?”

“I’m trying, okay Nurse? Maybe it doesn’t look that way to you, but I’m trying here,” Dex says, trying to tampen down the way he wants to just start shouting. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like we weren’t bros enough to room together or whatever. And I probably should have said more than just sorry afterwards.”

What Dex doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want to get started on his Lifetime Original Movie worthy sob story, is that the fact he even managed to say sorry at all was a big fucking milestone. His counselor at Samwell had literally  _ whooped _ in excitement when she’d heard about it.

For a moment, Dex thinks Nursey is gonna say something like, “ _ Try harder _ ,” but he doesn’t. He just nods tursely.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” he says.

Dex agrees, “I drove eight fucking hours and, before that, had to listen to my sister tell me this was the stupidest idea I’d ever had.”

“It was stupid,” Nursey says. “You didn’t even ask, but I guess it’s chill. You’re here now. How long you staying?”

“Through the end of the series?” Dex says, trying to play off the visit. “If the Falcs actually win…”

Nursey shakes his head and says, in a serious tone of voice, “Don’t fucking jinx it, Poindexter.”

“It’d be nice to watch the game with a Wellie,” Dex finishes in a rush, because he really doesn’t want to jinx it.

“I’ll show you the guest room,” Nursey says. “And you should put your car in the garage, it doesn’t have a New York parking permit.”

Dex follows Nursey up the stairs and to a door on the right hand side.

Nursey says, “It was Farrah’s room before she moved out, so there’s still a lot of her shit in there. There’s nothing on the bed, though, so you’re welcome to it. Bathroom’s across the hall. I’m next to the bathroom. The garage code is 1993. Don’t let the cat out and for the love of god don’t wake me up before noon.”

With that, Nursey gives Dex a mock solute and enters his room across the hall.

Dex heads downstairs, out the front door, and pretends he's moving his car. All he really does is get his duffle bag and the half eaten bag of Chex Mix from the passenger seat. He doesn’t know why he didn’t tell Nursey that Farrah had given him the garage code, just that he doesn’t.

He reenters the house through the garage door and meets Zamboni in the kitchen.

“That went better than I thought it would, don’t you think?” he asks the cat.

She meows in return.

Dex isn’t sure if she agrees or not.

\---

It’s past two in the afternoon when Nursey gets up the next day. 

“Jesus, Poindexter, it’s creepy to just sit in a dark room,” Nursey says as he descends the stairs. “How long have you been there?”

Dex has been up since seven. It’s a minor miracle and a testament to how exhausted he is that he’d managed to sleep that late. If he’d been home, his alarm would have gone off at 5:00 AM sharp. He had briefly left the house at around 8:00 to get a shitty coffee and a package of Little Debbie donuts from the bodega a few streets over. He’d been too afraid to touch any of the food in the Nurse house. He had, however, fed the cat when he’d returned because the bowl on the kitchen floor was empty and she was meowing pitifully at him. 

“It wasn’t as dark before,” he mutters, looking down at his phone. He’d been texting Miley, but her replies had been sporadic at best. 

Nursey shakes his head and flops down on the couch next to Zamboni.

Dex tries to look at Nursey in such a way that Nursey doesn’t know he’s looking. Nursey’s hair is wet (Dex had heard water running about forty minutes ago) and, while he’s still in sweats at least they’re a different pair than yesterday.

Dex spends a few minutes trying to think of something to say, but he finds words won’t come. He looks over at Nursey and sees him petting Zams, head turned away from him. They sit like that for a while, silent. 

“I have bipolar disorder,” says Nurse eventually, decidedly not looking at Dex. “I’m kind of in a lowish funk right now and stuff so I’ve probably been a little weird. It was worse before Farrah left for her dance thing. So could you please stop looking at me like that? I’m fine. I’ve always been like this. I know how to handle it.”

Dex listens and he breathes. He doesn’t do much else. He listens and breaths, watches the easy rise and fall of Zamboni’s chest and tires to match it. 

That’s why Farrah had been  _ worried _ worried. Or almost  _ worried  _ worried. Her brother was in the middle of a depressive episode, their parents were mysteriously absent, and she was about to leave him alone.

After a moment, when Dex can focus on something other than his breathing, he says, “I didn’t think you couldn’t handle it--whatever it ended up being--I just thought maybe you shouldn’t have to handle it alone.”

Nursey says nothing, just buries his face in Zamboni’s fur.

Dex clears his throat and says, “Thanks for trusting me with this moment,” in his best approximation of Shitty’s voice.

This produces a low rumble-like laugh from Nursey, “Dude, this is so awkward.”

Dex shrugs, even though Nursey can’t see him. 

“I think this is the longest we’ve ever gone off ice without screaming at each other,” Nursey continues, turning his face so he can look at Dex. “Isn’t that weird? We’re going to share a room together and this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had.”

"We don't really talk," says Dex, starting to pick at his lip. It's chapped from the summer heat, peeling from a sunburn he’d gotten on the boat a few days ago.

Nursey gives him a look and says, "Because we fight about everything. So, if we only talk about, like, the team or Mario Kart or Samwell gossip, we can't argue too much."

Dex absentmindedly reaches for Zamboni. She’d gotten up when Nursey had moved, perching herself on the arm of the couch, further away than it is comfortable to reach from the armchair. But Dex needs to do something with his hands before he does something stupid like tell Nursey he is sorry about how he behaved their freshmen year. Not that he isn’t sorry, but Dex has reached an apology limit for the time being.

“Should we?” Dex asks, voice embarrassingly small. He felt embarrassingly small and soft in that moment, like when he’d had to ask his mom for new shoes his junior year of high school because the snowmelt was soaking his socks.

Nursey watches him pet the cat, his expression less tight than last night but still just as tired. Even though every instinct in his body says to turn away, Dex looks back.

“I don’t know,” Nursey says in a voice just barely louder than a whisper. “What if we don’t like what we find? What if talking just makes everything worse?”

_ “I’m afraid to break it,” _ Dex had said to his social worker, seventeen and weeks away from his adoption hearing.

_ “You can call her mom if you want, Liam,”  _ she had said in a gentle voice _. “It won’t break anything. You can try and be happy, it’s okay. You deserve it.” _

Dex shakes the memory and says, “What if it doesn’t?”

They look at each other. Nursey still kind of looks like shit and Dex knows he probably looks just as bad. His mouth feels dry and powdery, although he’d finished the little sleeve of donuts hours ago. This moment seems pivotal, a turning point in both their lives. 

“Okay,” Nursey says after a while. “What are we supposed to talk about? And please don’t say my mental health because I’d like to pretend that never happened.”

“Are you excited for the new Star Wars movie?” asks Dex because he’s a fucking nerd who sucks at small talk. 

Nursey lowers himself to the couch and says, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen any of them.”

\---

"I don't know, man," Nursey says, halfway through Clone Wars with a mouthful of Pad Thai. "It's just like, don't you have things that you don't tell people? Even when they're your bros? I know you do because I know shit for all about, like, anything in your life.

Dex picks at a scab on his lip and says, "I'm allergic to gluten." Because any of the other things--the whole adopted thing, the whole not straight thing--are too big. He kind of regrets saying they should talk more. Bros can have secrets from bros, but maybe there's one too many festering between them.

"Shit man," Nursey says with a low whistle, "but I've seen you eat Bitty's pies! Won't that, like, kill you?"

Dex shrugs and says, "Lack of self-preservation."

"Same," says Nursey. 

Suddenly, the room is a lot tenser. From the TV screen, Jar Jar Binks is doing something fucking stupid, but Dex isn't paying attention to that. He's watching Nursey playing with the strings of his hoodie, decidedly not looking anywhere.

"I'll make you a deal, Nurse," Dex says, trying to pretend everything is normal. "No, a challenge."

Nursey looks up at that, eyes darting tentatively in Dex's direction. 

Dex smiles like his stomach isn't churning and says, "I dare you to tell me one thing everyday that you normally wouldn't."

"Why?"

Dex shrugs and shoves a mouthful of fried tofu into his mouth to give himself a second to think. He chews thoroughly before he replies, “Because we’re trying to actually talk to each other and not just yell?”

Nursey looks back down, this time at his hands. They've been shaky all day. Dex stupidly wants to reach out and cover Nursey's hands with his own. To stop the shaking, he tells himself. But he doesn't because, no matter what people want to believe, Dex isn't a jerk. Nursey is radiating "don't touch me" vibes that could be picked up from mars. So, instead Dex looks away politely.

"Alright," Nursey says after a few minutes. "I'll accept your challenge if you accept mine."

Dex sees something of the old Nursey--no, that's not right, he really needs to stop thinking about Nursey as a before and an after--something of a less burdened Nursey for a moment.

"Which is?" Dex asks, trying to sound challenging when all he wants to do is tip toe around Nursey.

Nursey smiles, the first time he has done so without a bite since Dex got here, and says, "Quid pro quo. That means--"

"I know what quid pro quo means, Nurse," he replies, rolling his eyes. "A secret for a secret?"

Nursey nods. "A secret for a secret."

“I think we’re square for the day,” Dex says. 

Nursey nods in agreement. “Yup. I one hundred percent agree with you and cannot stand the embarrassment of you knowing anymore about me. However, I believe we are currently two for one?”

“What?” Dex sputters, “how?”

“Mental illness and Star Wars to one food allergy,” Nursey points out. “Now, I’m not the Computer Science major, but that there is a ratio of two to one, Dexy boy, so that means you owe me one.”

Dex rolls his eyes. “Chirp, chirp, Nurse. But because it was my idea, I’ll humor you. I’m an applied mathematics major. I started off as comp sci freshman year, but switched last fall because I missed doing math.”

Nursey flings a noodle at Dex’s head.

“Nerd.”

\---

The next two days pass in relatively the same fashion. Dex wakes up hours before Nursey does, don’t bring himself to touch the fridge without explicit permission, and gets shitty coffee at the bodega. 

On Sunday, Nurse catches him at it.

“We have coffee here,” Nurse says as Dex opens the door.

Dex nearly drops his cup.

Nursey is still at the island in the kitchen, a mug in one hand, and a bemused expression on his face. Dex, however, doesn’t find anything about the situation to be humorous. Instead, dread forms in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t know how he’s going to explain this one to Nurse, and the panic starts to eat at him.

The smirk falls from Nursey face and he sets the mug on the counter. He slides off the stool and walks over to the door. He takes the paper coffee cup from Dex’s hand, gently prying his fingers from their vice-like grip. He leads Dex to the island, sets the cup down next to his own, and nudges Dex into the stool next to his own.

Nursey doesn’t say anything and Dex, he’s still trying to hit the ‘escape’ button on the crashing program that is his mind.

“Hey,” Nursey says after a while. “It’s chill. I don’t care if you like shitty bodega coffee or if you like to walk around or whatever.”

Dex takes a breath and says, in a very small voice, “Does anyone really like bodega coffee?”

“No, not really,” Nursey says with a little chuckle. “Why are you drinking it and...aren’t you allergic to those things? Donuts are definitely made of gluten.”

Dex looks at the crumpled package of donuts in his left hand. He is very much allergic to the donuts but eating them won’t kill him, but just make him feel like shit later. Before he’d developed the allergy, his dad had bought him the same donuts at the gas station by the rink after practice. It was one of Dex’s only okay-ish memories of him.

“I didn’t know if I was allowed to,” Dex manages to say, jaw tight.

Nursey asks, “Allowed to what?”

“Don’t make me say it,” Dex says in a voice that sounds a little too much like begging. It’s embarrassing that, after all these years, he’s still afraid of opening cabinets. 

The food hoarding had stopped pretty quickly, about a month after moving to Winter Harbor. His mom had handed him a box of granola bars after finding a few stale dinner rolls in his sock drawer and that had been that. The permission thing was still a problem, but one Dex managed to avoid by never going anywhere where he’d need to ask anything. It had, in his defense, worked well until this moment.

Nursey gets up, crossed the kitchen, and takes a mug from on of the upper cabinets. It is Samwell mug with the crest and  _ Samwell Mom _ written on it. Nursey fills it with coffee from the machine by the stove and walks it over to Dex. Nurse sets it down and comes back with a sugar bowl, creamer, and a spoon.

“Dude, you’re welcome to anything here,” he says. “You don’t have to ask, but if you need reminders, that’s chill too.”

Dex nods and looks at the offered mug. There is a small part of him that feels like this is a trap, but he quickly smothers it. Nursey is a lot of things, but he isn’t cruel. He wouldn’t do that to Dex, not even before he’d shown up at his front door. 

“They used to lock the cabinets,” Dex says, because this feels like the right time. No one at Samwell knows about Dex’s history, except the coaches and his counselor. 

Nursey furrows his brow and asks, “Who?”

Dex shrugs, reaches for the sugar, and mutters, “The fosters. I can’t remember which ones. Not all of them, but enough.”

While Dex carefully measures out six spoonfuls of sugar, Nursey stares at him. Chowder knows Dex is adopted, but not the whole story. Bitty knows his dad isn’t in the picture, but not the whole story. No one else on the team knows because Dex doesn’t talk about himself, not if he can help it. And, in the rare cases he does, it’s always about his family in Winter Harbor and mostly about his little sister.

“That’s shitty,” Nursey says. He doesn’t push, but if he did Dex might let him know more. Something about this moment, early in the morning and without bitterness, makes Dex want to tell Nurse about his life.

Gross.

Dex adds a seventh spoonful of sugar to his coffee and takes a sip.

“It was,” is all Dex says on the matter.

Nursey drops it. 

Nursey, who has never known how to leave good enough alone, takes a sip of his coffee and calls Zamboni over from where she’s sitting in the kitchen window. 

Dex wonders what weird world he’s entered where Dex voluntarily shares things about his past and Nursey doesn’t ask questions, or at least not too many. 

“Game six is this afternoon,” Nursey says, when Zams refuses to answer his calls.

“Yeah.”

Nursey says, “If the Falcs win, we know a Stanley Cup champion.”

“More than one,” Dex counters, “if you count Tater. He’s, like, an honorary Wellie at this point.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about someone,” Nurse jokes and Dex knows it’s a joke by the slight upward tilt of Nursey’s lips and when did Dex figure that out?

Dex snorts, “Well, he’s better at pong then you are. Next kegster, I’m phoning in a new partner.”

“You wouldn’t dare, Poindexter,” Nursey says. “Somethings are sacred. You can’t ruin our streak.”

“Our losing streak.”

Nursey reaches over and pulls him into a headlock. Dex’s heart begins to rabbit in his chest, but all Nursey does is ruffle his bristly hair and let go and say, “Let’s get lunch before the game. I was thinking Indian. There’s a place that has the best samosas ever.”

And they do get samosas and Dex has to admit they’re pretty good, but watching Nursey actually leave the house for the first time in days is even better.

\---

After the Falcs crushing defeat that evening, Dex and Nursey stare at the television in silence for a good ten minutes. Playing and losing a close game is awful, but watching someone else do it isn’t much better.

“Fuck this,” Nurse says after a while, “I’m gonna get ulcers from this.”

Dex, sitting on the couch next to him, says, “I probably already have ulcers.”

“If you stopped eating food you’re incapable of digesting, you might not,” Nurse chirps halfheartedly, his hands covering his eyes.

“You ordered the samosas!”

Nursey kicks him and says, “Didn’t have to eat them.”

And Dex didn’t, but Nursey had been raving about them and they were mostly filling anyway. He’d only had one and Nursey had looked pleased when he’d said they were the best (and admittedly the first) samosas he’d ever had.

“Let’s watch the next Star Wars,” Dex says because he doesn’t want to say he ate them to make Nursey happy because that’s pathetic.

While it is already almost eight at night, they start  _ The Empire Strikes Back _ . This one is probably Dex’s least favorite of the original trilogy and he tells Nurse this when Luke meets Yoda.

“It’s just sad?” Dex says eventually, unable to describe the empty feeling he gets at the end of the film.

On screen, Luke is caring Yoda on his back and they’re talking about the Force. He’s talking about all the things Jedi must be and it’s always bothered Dex that they’re so many rules to being a Jedi.

To his right, Nurse has slumped against the armrest and pulled the throw blanket from the top on the couch over his shoulders. He watches Luke train in the swamps with rapt attention. When Dex had made him start with the prequels, Nursey had dozed during some of the less important parts--no one needs to watch Anakin podrace, really--but the original trilogy seems to be holding his attention. 

“I like sad things, sometimes,” Nursey mutters. “I like when I’m sad about something real, you know?”

Dex gestures to the screen, where Yoda is raising an X-Wing from the swamp, and says, “Very realistic.”

Nursey stretches out his legs to gently nudge Dex with his toes.

“Smartass,” he says, legs still stretched out on Dex’s side of the couch. “I meant real as in something not made up in my head, memories and shit.”

Dex thinks about it. He can kind of understand where Nursey is coming from. When Dex was a kid, he’d read a lot of books. He’d done this for a couple of reasons. One, library cards were free. Two, his dad had complete control over the TV and watching it with him usually meant you’d be on the receiving end of his anger when his team lost. And, three, books were portable if he needed to get the hell out of dodge. In the books he’d read, he’d always found it comforting when a character suffered and succeeded in the end.

Dex reaches out, rests a hand on Nursey’s calf, and says, “I get that. Still,  _ A New Hope _ is better.”

“Reserving my judgement until we finish,” quips Nurse. “And then you’ll have to wait until the sequel trilogy and all the standalone movies come out.”

“That’s a lot of movies,” Dex replies. In his head, he’s thinking, “ _ that’s a lot of years.” _

Nursey smiles and says, “I like to be thorough.”

They watch the rest of the movie in relative silence, Nursey occasionally saying something about how hot young Harrison Ford is, and Dex’s hand resting on Nusey’s calf.

\---

The next night is the night before game seven and both Dex and Nursey have been snapping at each other all day.

It started when, at 10:00 when Nursey woke up on the couch, and went straight into the kitchen to feed Zamboni. However, Dex had already fed Zamboni. It was a stupid fight, but it set the tone for the rest of the day.

By nine in the evening, they’ve had no fewer than six fights and they’ve shared zero secrets. At seven, Dex had retreated into Farrah’s old room to calm down and avoid another fight.

A little after nine, Nursey knocks on the door and sheepishly asks Dex if he wants to go on a walk.

Dex asks, "Is that safe?"

Nursey laughs, "I have loved the stars much too fondly to be fearful of the night."

Dex stares at him. He knows that line. Miley has a print of it in her bedroom. Mom had bought it for her when she was eight. She had been terrified of the dark, sleeping with all her lights on. Mom gave Dex a stack of little glow in the dark stars and said, "Put them up in Miley’s room, so she won't be so lonely." Dex, sixteen and about as creative as a rock, had put them into real constellations. There was Andromeda and Orion, the Big Dipper, and the little one too. She'd hung up the little poster and while Miley was still hesitant, she started sleeping with only the hall light on, seeping soft light from under the crack of her door.

Nursey takes Dex's silence for either annoyance or confusion and says, "It's fucking Manhattan. It's not like, Samwell safe or like Middle of Nowhere, Maine safe but it's safe enough."

Dex shrugs and says, "Alright."

Nursey looks at him like he wanted more of a fight, like he wants to fight right now. Instead, he slips on a pair of fucking Birkenstocks and waits for Dex to cram his feet into his beat up sneakers.

Outside, it's nice. It smells a little like sewer water, but Dex doesn't mind because Nursey looks less on edge than he has all day. He walks around the sidewalk with his head tilted back and arms outstretched, like how someone might dance in the rain.

Dex looks up to and is surprised to see that there isn't a single star in the sky. He looks around in panic and then locates the moon. Well, at least that was one thing light pollution hadn't managed to fade yet.

"Yeah, the view is kind of terrible," Nursey says, stopping a little in front of Dex on the sidewalk. A middle aged man walking a very small dog brushes past them, but they ignore each other.

"I begged my parents for a telescope as a kid," Nursey says. "I wanted one so bad. I finally got one form my eighth birthday or something. I was so mad when I tried to look outside with it. Couldn't see a damn thing, except the neighbor's cat in the window."

Dex looks down, over to Nursey. He tries to imagine it, Nursey looking for all the stars he'd read about in his mythology books, only to be disappointed by reality. 

"You could bring it to Samwell," Dex suggests. "It's got plenty of stars."

Nursey looks over to him and asks, "Bring what?"

"The telescope."

Nursey laughs, "I don't have it anymore, Will. Tossed it."

Dex of just a few weeks ago would have gotten mad, called Nursey out for being a spoiled rich kid who had everything handed to him. Tonight, though, all Dex does is start walking again and wait for Nursey to follow. 

When he does, Dex says, "It's Liam."

"What?"

Dex shrugs and says, "Everyone calls me Liam back home."

“Bitty calls you Will sometimes,” Nursey points out.

“Yup, but that’s not my name. My dad was Will, I’m Liam.”

Nursey follows Dex walking towards the direction of the bodega he’d gotten coffee at his first few days in New York.

He says, “William J. Poindexter, Junior.”

“William James Lynch, Junior,” Dex corrects, stopping at an intersection and waiting for the light to change. “I changed my middle and last name when I got adopted.”

Dex waits for Nursey to say something, but all he does grab Dex’s elbow and lead him across the street when the coast is clear. Apparently, if you live in New York, crosswalk signals are ignored.

“What’s the “J” stand for now?”

Dex says, “It’s stands for Jay. J-A-Y. My sister picked it out.”

They walk in silence. Dex grits his teeth. His birth name felt like an invader in his mouth. He hadn’t said it in years. Most days, he didn’t even think about it. Being a Lynch felt like a bad dream.

Nursey leads them two streets over, his hand still on Dex’s elbow, to a frozen yogurt place. 

They don’t talk much as they eat their frozen yogurt. Nurse swipes gummy bears from the top of Dex’s pineapple and chocolate swirl and covers his own vanilla cup in Froot Loops. The anger from the morning evaporates, for Dex at least. Nursey looks unsure with each gummy bear he swipes.

Dex pushes his cup across the small table and says, “You can have the rest. Sorry I didn’t tell you I fed Zams.”

“It’s chill,” Nursey says through a mouthful of gummy bears. “Sorry I called the math department the lax bros of academics.”

Dex takes his spoon and steals a bite of Nursey’s frozen yogurt.

“It’s chill,” he says, and try as he might, he can’t do it without bursting into laughter.

\---

When Dex wakes up on Tuesday morning to Nursey slipping on his shoes, he kind of freaks out. They’d fallen asleep on the couch trying to finish  _ Return of the Jedi _ after their late froyo adventure. Dex hasn’t been away from Nursey for longer than a few minutes, sleep excluded, for almost five days

"Where are you going?" Dex asks blearily, struggling to sit up.

"It's chill," Nursey says, making a shushing noise. "I'm just going to get coffee. I'll be back in, like, half an hour."

Dex gets up anyway. Nursey sighs dramatically, leaning a shoulder against the wall.

"It's fine, Dex," Nursey assures him. There's a hint of frustration on his face, something in the narrowing of his eyebrows. 

Dex looks around, uncertain. Dex is a worrier by nature and somehow Nursey has ended up on the list of people to worry about.

“I’ll bring back bagels,” Nursey says. “Go back to sleep.”

Dex mumbles, “I’m allergic to bagels. Lots of gluten.”

“I’ll bring you back gluten free bagels.”

“Goss.”

Nurse retorts, “You’re gross,” before exiting out the front door.

Dex doesn’t go back to sleep. He texts his mom,  _ “Still alive. Nurse seems better? I don’t know. _ ”

Then, he calls his sister.

“Liam!” she answers, “How’s NYC? Did you get me my pictures?”

Dex laughs. He’d almost forgotten her request.

He sits up, yawns once, and pushes the blanket he’d been curled up under off. Next to him, in the space Nursey had vacated on the couch, Zamboni is curled up. 

“No,” he admits. “I’ve only seen Nurse’s place, a bodega with terrible coffee, a froyo shop, and an Indian restaurant.”

She asks, “What have you been doing with all your time?”

“Watching  _ Star Wars _ ,” he answers. 

And that is a mostly true statement. They have been watching  _ Star Wars _ but, if Dex is being honest, he’s been spending more time watching Nurse watch  _ Star Wars _ than actually watching the movies himself.

“Nerd,” she says, but it sounds more fond than anything else. 

Dex doesn’t protest, instead he just says, “Nursey had never seen them before. We’re almost done.”

The thought is a bittersweet one. He doesn’t want to movies to end. Or the secrets. Or sitting next to Nurse, Zamboni curled up between them.

Dex shakes his head. Those are dangerous thoughts, he knows, ones best to keep under lock and key and never say aloud. It’s a good thing Dex is good at not saying things. 

Miley says, “You’re still a nerd, but maybe Nursey’s one too. I’ll be watching the game tonight, bored, while I watch the Flannery brats down on Forsythia.”

“First job of the summer?”

“Yup, you’ve officially missed the arrival of the first waves of tourists, lucky you,” she quips. “I ran into them all on the boardwalk, hanging up flyers, and it was all, ‘Miley, my dear girl, you’ve gotten so tall. Also, we can’t stand our bratty children so can you please watch them for us?’ Which is nice for business, you know, and the Flannery kids aren’t so bad.”

Dex says, “Remember to lock the doors and--”

“Don’t answer it for strangers, I know Liam,” she interjects. “I’m very responsible.”

“Debatable.”

Miley says, “Yeah, yeah, love you too, booger breath,” before hanging up on him.

Dex sighs and looks over at Zamboni.

“I’m pathetic,” he says to the cat.

The cat responds by walking over and falling asleep in his lap. 

Nursey finds them there twenty minutes later, both asleep. If he takes a picture before waking Dex up, that’s his own business. If he posts it on instagram, well, that’s his business too, until Chowder starts chirping him in the comments.

\---

It’s a good game. Dex and Nursey watch it from the couch without saying much, too nervous and engrossed in watching the Falcs.

When Jack gets the puck in the third period, mere moments left on the clock, Dex grips Nursey’s arm. When Jack takes a shot, he digs his nails into his forearm. When the puck goes in, they’re both silent for a moment.

The buzzer goes off.

“Holy fucking shit,” Nurse says, turning to Dex. “Jack Zimmermann is a Stanley Cup champion.”

Dex screams, “Fuck yeah!” and throws his arms around Nursey’s neck.

They topple over on the couch, sending Zamboni running from her perch on the armrest. Nursey wraps his arms around Dex’s middle and laughs, a soft and breathy sound, against the hollow of Dex’s throat.

He pats Dex’s side twice and says, “Alright, let me up, Poindexter. I want to see everyone rush the ice.”

Dex, suddenly embarrassed, drops his arms and sits up, his checks burning. He doesn’t know why he’d done that, practically tackled Nursery, but now his skin feels uncomfortably small for his body. He starts wringing his hands in his lap, twisting them together.

Nusey sits up, elbows bushing Dex’s, and points to the TV.

“Hey, look!” he shouts. “It’s Bitty!”

It was hard to see but, in the middle of the crowd rushing the ice is Bitty, running straight for Jack. Dex looks behind him waiting to see Ransom, Holster, Lardo, and Shitty to come running, but he’s caught off guard by Nursey, gently grabbing his arm.

“Holy fuck,” he says, “Dexy, look.”

And Dex follows his gaze to where Jack Zimmermann, Stanley Cup Champion, is kissing his boyfriend on national television.

It probably last no more than a few seconds, but to Dex, it lasts an eternity.

It lasts longer than that first ride to Winter Harbor, where he’d refused to answer his social workers questions. It lasts longer than when he’d kissed Hunter Pucowski, just days before he’d beat the shit out of him. It lasts longer than the look his father had given him, when Dex had told him he was going to marry Keith Thompson from his mini-mites camp.

Eventually, the moment ends.

Bitty and Jack are engulfed in a Wellie group hug on screen and Dex turns to Nursey, a disbelieving smile on his face.

“Go put on real clothes, Nurse,” he says. “We’ve got a Stanley Cup Champion and his boyfriend to congratulate.” 

Nursey whoops, “Fuck yeah!” as he runs for the stairs.

Dex opens the group message, already buzzing with notifications from Chowder.

_ “WHERE is the kegster happening?” _ he texts. “ _ We’re coming up!” _

When Nurse comes down the stairs, green snapback on, Dex shouts, “Grab my flannel from the kitchen! It’s a four hour drive to Providence, so we better get a fucking move on.”

By the time Dex and Nursey make it to Providence, the party is at Jack’s house and it’s almost one in the morning. 

They park a block away and Nursey loops his arm through Dex’s.

“Mother fucking Stanley Cup Champion mother fucking Jack Zimmermann’s appartment, let’s go!” Nusey says, pulling Dex forward.

He laughs.

When they enter the apartment, Nursey lets go and wonders in the direction of the kitchen. Dex spots Chowder watching them from the couch. Next to Chowder is Potts, looking uncomfortable, and Lardo.

Chowder waves him over, shouting, “Dex! I’m glad you guys made it. Bitty’s on his sixth pie.”

Dex laughs, “How does he have time when his boyfriend’s a Stanley Cup Champion?”

“Beats me,” Chowder says with a shrug. “It’s Bitty. Pies just appear.”

Dex stands behind Chowder, leaning over the couch. Lardo shoots him a grin before turning her gaze back to the game of pong happening on Jack’s dining room table.

“Nursey seems happy,” Chowder says, gesturing to where Nurse has emerged from the kitchen with two beers. He’s talking animatedly to Shitty, his hat askew on his curls.

Dex says, “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you were staying at his place until he posted on instagram this morning,” Chowder says. “You seemed comfortable.”

Dex mutters, “Zamboni is like fifteen pounds of fur. She’s very warm.”

“I wasn’t talking about the cat.”

Dex doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know how to rationalize his behavior the past week, rushing to be there for Nurse. He couldn’t blame Farrah, for asking him to check on Nursey, or Ransom for asking Dex to have his back. No, this problem is all Dex’s and he isn’t sure how to handle it.

Across the room, Nursey bumps into someone and knocks their beer out of their hands. He fumbles around for some napkins, both hands still full, and ends up spilling one of the beers in his hands. Shitty eventually takes pity on him and holds one of the bottles while Nursey mops up spilled beer.

Chowder says, “I’m glad you went to see him.”

Dex, watching Nursey carry handfuls of beer-soaked napkins to the kitchen trash, says, “Me too.”

Eventually, Nusey makes it over to Dex and Chowder.

“Nice check there, Nurse!” Dex says, grinning.

“Chirp, chirp,” Nursey says. “And here I was, being a good bro, bring you a beer.”

Nursey stands behind Dex, chest pressed against his back, and dangles the other beer over his shoulder.

_ Oh _ , Dex thinks, taking the beer.

Chowder calls, “Where’s my drink, Nursey?”

Nursey rests his chin on Dex’s shoulder to talk to Chowder. 

_ Oh _ , Dex thinks, louder this time.

“I only got two hands,” he says, his voice rumbling through Dex. “Had to give it to my D-Man, you know? We got each other’s backs.

_ I like Nurse _ .

The thought isn’t like ice in his veins. It is not earth shattering or completely devastating. It is like the moment of clarity towards the end of a challenging math problem, the  _ a-ha! _ moment. To Dex, it felt like putting the last piece into a puzzle.

_ Oh _ , he thinks.  _ So that’s what this is _ .

“Right, Dexy?” Nursey asks, turning his head to look at Dex.

This close, Dex could count his eyelashes if he wanted to (which he does), but instead he just swallows and says, “Yeah. We got each other’s back.”

From somewhere behind Dex, Shitty screams, “This baby is a Stanley Cup Champion!”

The moment is over. Nursey lets go, turns around to watch Shitty parade around the room with a framed photograph of Jack as a baby. Dex looks down at his hands.

“Dude…” Chowder whispers next to him.

Dex holds up a hand and says, “Nope. We’re not talking about it. We’re...we’re doing a Samwich run.”

“Dex.”

Dex shouts, “Sandwiches! I’m doing a Samwich run! Who wants one?”

Chowder gets up with a sigh, “Fine. We’re doing a Samwich run.”

Dex takes out his phone to ask the group message how many sandwiches they want, casting one last look at Nursey before he turns towards the door. Nursey isn’t looking in his direction, which is okay. It’s enough.

This is enough.

It is enough.

\---

Three days later, after the celebrations die down and Dex and Nursey say goodbye, Dex finds himself repeating the mantra.

This is enough. It is enough. It is enough.

The point of looking isn’t to be looked at.

The point of liking isn’t to be liked back.

This is enough.


	2. today my heart wears you like curtains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from “Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today” by Emily Jungmin Yoon.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/185571731@N05/49099890572/in/photostream/)

Derek’s having a shitty October. 

First, it’s still in the seventies outside. It’s too warm to wear his favorite favorite beanie (he wears in anyway) and it’s too hot for his pumpkin spice latte (he drinks it anyway).

Second, his poetry professor has been un-fucking-bearable. Professor Brisbois fell in love with a poem in Derek’s portfolio he’d written freshman year. She thinks it’s worthy of being published in the Samwell Review, but not without some revisions. So, for the past two months, Derek’s had a weekly meeting with her where she’s nitpicked every revision he makes. The deadline for submission is next Tuesday.

Third, rooming with Dex is going...less than well.

Derek had thought, after the summer, that maybe they could actually live together and not hate each other. And, they had been rooming together very well until the fourth thing.

Derek breaks his wrist.

The thing about breaking bones is that, normally, they give you some medicine to reduce the swelling, it makes you a bit sleepy, and you move on. Combined with his lithium, it makes him feel dazed and dizzy as fuck. Climbing the ladder up to his bunk starts to become an acrobatic act. 

He doesn’t tell anyone about this. Derek knows that, if he did, his choices would be to either go off his lithium (a bad choice, he’s only been off them once in the last three years and it was not a good time) or stop taking the painkillers (also a bad choice if he wants to recover quickly enough to play in the spring). So, yeah, Nursey tells no one about his stupid dizzy spells. 

“Did you really have to put the pie under his bed?” Chowder asks, after Dex has carried his matress down into the basement.

Nursey shrugs and says, “I didn’t mean to put it here?”

Chowder sighs.

They’re both studying. Derek is on the beanbag with a copy of  _ Spring and All _ , his pen hovering over the page. Chowder has his computer open on the desk, a black screen with while text open. Derek does not think about how Dex should be sitting there with them, on his bed, complaining loudly about something called “Real Analysis” that goes way over Derek’s head.

“He didn’t even take the bunks apart,” Derek points out, unable to focus under Chowder’s judging gaze. “He’ll be back.”

Chowder says, “He hung up a sign on the laundry room door.”

Derek tries not to be hurt by that. Instead, he finds his rereading the same line over and over again. After the third time he reads, “It’s just a moment,” he slams the thin blue book shut.

“Okay, so he’s left,” Nursey says. “I knew he would, you knew he would. It’s fine, we’re chill. We’re not even playing on the same line anymore, so we don’t have to be friends.”

Chowder glares of his shoulder and says, “Derek Malik Nurse, stop pretending you didn’t do anything to push him out.”

“The pie was an accident.”

“And the underwear?” Chowder asks.

Derek deflects, “Like that’s really important. And he was being kind of an asshole about the music thing.”

“He was,” Chowder agrees. “I’m not saying it’s all anyone’s fault you two are fight--”

Derek interfects, “We’re not fighting.”

“Fighting,” Chowder repeats, more firmly. “You’re both at fault and you both need to apologize, but how about you try not to kill each other for the next four days.”

“Why?”

Chowder says, “Because it’s family weekend, Nursey, and Dex’s mom and sister are coming down this afternoon. Please try not to murder each, okay? I’m sure that’d be a great first college experience for Miley.”

“Fine,” Derek relents, “for the superior Poindexter, I will refrain from murdering Dex. Happy?”

“Nope,” Chowder says, turning back to his coding. “You know I hate it when you two get like this. I thought, after this summer, things would be different.”

“You and me both.”

Derek pushes the book of poetry aside and grabs his laptop from the floor. He knows he’s among the minority, but he prefers typing over handwriting his poems. There is something about the clack of keys and the rhythm of it all.

The poem Professor Brisbois thinks has a chance of being the first student-published piece in the Samwell Review is one he hadn’t thought about in over a year. Honestly, it was only in his portfolio because he wanted there to be a piece from each semester to show his professors growth. The poem is an angry poem. Derek wrote it when he was angry and finds that he only makes revisions that Professor Brisbois likes when he is angry.

There is a line in the beginning that has gone through many changes. It started off as:

_ here we go again, a boy afraid of touching other boys  _

But Professor Brisbois said that it didn’t feel powerful enough. So Derek had changed it to:

_ just fists--a boy’s hands have never been soft _

Then, she’d complained it had lost some of its rawness. 

Which is how Derek found himself staring at the same line of text, trying to remember the way he’d felt when he’d been eighteen, after a game, when he’d reached to give Dex’s shoulder a pat and instead found himself staring into a pair of light brown eyes, full of furry. Except, Derek isn’t eighteen anymore. He’s twenty, almost twenty-one, and he knows Dex isn’t like that and has years and a summer to prove it.

_ “I didn’t know if I was allowed,” _ Dex had said, crumpled package of donuts in his hand.  _ “They used to lock the cabinets.” _

Everytime Derek tires to feel that anger, he remembers a summer of swapping secrets and  _ Star Wars _ movie marathons. When Derek tries to remember Dex shrugging off his hand, he remembers him sitting in his parent’s kitchen instead. Although he tries not to, Derek wonders if something worse than food deprivation (which is admittedly terrible) happened to Dex.

\---

There are two things Derek knows about Dex’s family and one thing he thought he knew and is really confusing him now. The first is that Dex’s mom’s name is Leona and she is, according to Chowder, a literal angel. She is apparently the kind of person that instantly makes people feel at home, warm and kind. 

The second is that Dex has a little sister that he calls Miles and he adores her. Derek knows he calls her every other day and sends her letters almost as often. Sometimes they FaceTime and Derek hears an excited voice squeal, “Liam,” before exiting the room.

The thing he thought he knew but never really bothered to think about was this: that Dex’s family was white and probably red-headed like him. Which is why the grinning pre-teen sitting in the Haus kitchen with cookie dough on her dark nose, laughing with Dex and Bitty, confuses him.

“Miley Poindexter, now what did I tell you about puttin’ your hands in the cookie dough batter?” scolds Bitty without much heat. He’s clearly laughing and Dex is rolling his eyes.

The dark skinned girl, Miley Poindexter apparently, doesn’t even look the least bit ashamed. 

She shrugs and says, “But everyone knows that cookie dough is better than actual cookies. Like 100% better. Sorry, them’s the facts.”

Dex shakes his head. “Sorry, she was raised by wolves.”

“Ahh-woooo!” howls Miley, wiping the cookie dough of her nose. 

Derek lets the Haus door close softly behind him. He tries to sneak up the stairs, make a break for his room, but Bitty catches him.

“Derek, come try the first batch!” Bitty calls. He tosses a kitchen towel in Miley’s direction and says, in a soft voice he usual reserves only for Chowder, “Wipe your face, dear.”

Dex leans against the kitchen counter and asks, “Is that finable? I feel like that’s finable.”

Derek watches them as he slowly makes his way into the kitchen. Miley does, in fact, wipe her face but she tosses the towel at Dex when she’s done, telling him to, “Wipe the stupid off yours.” Bitty tries to look disapproving, but he’s failing miserably. He snaps a quick picture with his phone of the Poindexter siblings fighting over daisy-printed kitchen towel.

The fighting ends when Derek enters the kitchen. 

Dex straightens up, arm around his sister’s shoulder and says, “Hey, Nurse. This is Miley. Miley, meet Nurse.”

And, much to his surprise, she smiles. 

“Did you really break your arm falling over the boards?” she asks, brace-faced and wide grin splitting across her face. 

Dex tries to quiet her with a whispered, “Miles, don’t.”

Derek, however, waves him off.

“Yeah, I did,” he admits. “I’m kind of clumsy.”

Miley shakes her head, her faux-locs dancing over her shoulders, and says, “Me too. I’ve broken my arm twice, but once wasn’t my fault. Did you really call it a sports injury?”

“Miley,” Dex warns, but she barrels on.

“Next time I fall out of a tree I’m calling it a gardening injury!”

With the younger Poindexter, it’s easier to see she’s kidding. The inflection changes in her voice, her eyebrows go up, and her whole face is inviting. Dex is the polar opposite. He’s tense and awkward and his face seems to only know how to portray three emotions: emptiness, embarrassment, and extreme anger. 

Next to her, Dex turns his face into his shoulder and mutters, “I regret telling you anything about my life.”

Derek says, “Yeah, I guess it’s only kind of a sports injury? But at Samwell, if you don’t have a sports injury, you can’t see the athletic trainer for check ups and physical therapy. Otherwise, you gotta go into town for the townie doctors.”

“Weird,” Miley says, “but okay.”

Dex looks at him, at Bitty who is pulling the second tray of cookies out of the oven, and then back at Derek.

“I didn’t know that,” he says to Derek, head hung low.

Bitty hands Derek a plate of cookies. They’re slightly lump and have a sweet, cinnamony smell to them.

Miley explains, “They’re oatmeal butterscotch cookies! We call them scotchies.”

Derek takes one from the plate and takes a bite. They taste like warmth and butterbeer. He says the latter out loud.

Bitty smiles and says, “Well, you’ll have to thank Dex’s mom when you see her. It’s a Poindexter family recipe. She’s apparently having lunch with Chowder’s parents right now, but she’ll be at the game tomorrow and open practice. Speaking of, Miley, your brother said you brought your skates?”

“Yup!” the kid says, shoving another cookie in her mouth. “Liam told me to pack them.”

“Good,” Bitty replies, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “I thought, since you ice skate and all, I’d dust of my figure skates and we’d go have some fun. Only if your brother says yes, of course, and promises to put the last dozen cookies in the oven.”

Miley turns to Dex, bottom lip jutted out, and says, “Please?”

“Go, have fun doing toe flutzes or whatever it is you do,” Dex says, shaking his head.

Miley turns to leave the kitchen, snags one last cooking on her way out, and says, “I’ll text mom! Thanks, you’re the best.”

Following her, Bitty says, “You know, in order to know what a ‘flutz’ is, you gotta know your skating jumps enough to know what we call a lutz that takes off on the wrong edge. You are full of surprises today, Dex.”

Alone, in the kitchen, Derek is struck by the thought that this is the first time he’d been with Dex without a buffer since he moved out over a week ago. It’s strange, for things to go back to feel this strained again. It feels as if the summer never happened.

“They’re really good cookies,” Derek says, just to have something to say. “Butterscotch is one of my favorites.”

Dex looks at him. Before, Dex never really looked at Derek. He glared at him and yelled at him, but he didn’t look. Dex does a lot of looking these days, as if he needs the second to remind himself that they’re not enemies anymore. 

Or maybe it’s Derek who needs reminders.

Habits are easy to fall into. Back at Samwell, Dex and Derek fall back into sniping and arguing and withholding. Ruts are easy to fall back into. Changing behavior is hard for a reason; it becomes automatic.

Dex looks away. He turns to soak the cookie dough bowl, runs the water for the sink until the bowl starts to overflow.

“I might have known that,” Dex says, almost drowned out by the running water.

Derek mulls that over. Dex, who is deliberate in his actions even when they hurt, made cookies from a family recipe because he thought Derek might like them. The thought feels--not foreign, not exactly--like a dreamed up memory.

Sure, Derek remembers Dex’s visit over the summer. It had been during the tail end of a down swing, though, so it felt half-forgotten and half-imagined. It was easy to accept, while it happened, that Dex fed his cat and watched six sci-fi movies with him. After, the memories are like driving a familiar route early in the morning. Derek knows what turns he must have made to get to the destination, but can’t recall them.

The timer on the oven goes off.

Derek watches Dex grab an oven mitt and pull the cookie sheet out. He sets it down on the stove top, turns the oven off, and drops the mitt on the counter top. He doesn’t say anything else on the matter.

_ “Don’t make me say it,” _ Dex had said.

“Are these ‘I’m sorry’ cookies?” Derek asks, finally piecing it together.

Dex swallows and says, “Yeah.”

“You didn’t have to,” Derek mutters. He’s always been a little embarrassed, getting gifts. It probably has something to do with the whole Valentine’s Day birthday thing.

Dex takes a breath, “Yeah, I kinda did? I’m sort of shit at saying sorry. I’m working on it. But, for now, apology cookies, for the whole not helping out and making fun of your sport’s injury and stuff.”

“Stuff?” Derek says, because he can’t help it. Chirping is their main form of communication.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, stuff Nurse. I might have overreacted about the pie. Honestly, I’ve smelled worse.”

“It was pretty rank,” Derek agrees. “But, in the purpose of our quid pro quo agreement, I maybe had a bad reaction to the NSAIDS they gave me and fogged that bit out?”

Dex asks, “Fogged?”

“Fog brain forgot,” Derek elaborates, perhaps a bit unhelpfully, but he’s never been good at explaining his brain in real people words. It’s why he writes poetry. Everything had just be metaphors that only kind of make sense.

“That’s okay,” Dex says. “I’m not mad. I was kind of ticked off, but that only lasted for like long enough to drag my mattress down the stairs. I was kind of stressed about my Real midterm. It made me go a little crazy.”

Derek says, “I’m not mad either,” because it’s the truth. He isn’t mad and, apology cookies eaten, he considers them even.

Dex is twisting his hands in his lap. Derek has seen him do it before, hockey stick in his lap as they wait on the bench to be called in. It’s Dex’s nervous little fidget.

“Do you want to come back upstairs?” Derek asks.

_ “If you need reminders, I got you _ ,” Derek had said.

Maybe it wasn’t just cabinets Dex didn’t know how to ask to open.

Dex says, “Only if that’s okay with you.”

“Cheyeah!”

Derek is reminded of the game children play. 

_ Mister Fox, Mister Fox, what time is it? _

Don’t move without permission.

And, if you’re William Poindexter, don’t ask for permission either.

Don’t move.

Except.

Derek looks at the cookies.

Even plants move, slowly, reaching towards the sun.

\---

At the open practice the next morning, Tango stares at Dex in confusion.

“So that’s your mom,” he asks Dex, pointing to Leona Poindexter.

Leona Poindexter is sitting in the stands, shaved head covered in a Samwell beanie, a grin spread wide on her brown face. She’s young, younger than the rest of the parents. Miley is next to her, standing next to Bully’s baby sister. She seems to be giving the younger girl a rundown of the players on the team, gesturing to different players.

“Yup,” Dex replies.

Dex seems equal parts embarrassed, because he’s talking about himself, and proud because if Derek knows one thing about Dex with absolute certainty is the boy loves his family. 

Tango continues, “And that’s you sister.”

“Yup.”

Tango asks, “Then why are you white?”

Derek sighs. 

Chowder leans over the boards to whisper, under his breath, to Derek, “You can’t just ask people why they’re white.”

Derek snickers at that. Dex, however, rolls his eyes like maybe he’s gotten that joke before or maybe he’s even thought of it himself. 

“I’m adopted, Tango,” Dex says, very slowly. “Me and Miley.”

Beside him, Bitty says, “Oh that sweet boy.”

Derek sometimes wonders about Tango. 

“So you’re not Poindexter?”

“No, I am,” Dex replies, and Derek can tell he’s starting to get annoyed, “Just only for the last, like, three years.”

Derek sucks in a breath. For some reason, he’d imagined Dex being adopted as a kid, not as a teenager. He tries not to think about a teenage boy with ears too big thinking he’d never have a family. Honestly, Derek tries not to think about it at all. The concept is still so new to him that, if he starts thinking, he starts pitying Dex. And pity is something they’re not supposed to do.

Tango says, “Okay.”

And practice starts.

Derek has been bench-bound since his injury. He doesn’t even get to gear up, not until after winter break. Instead, he sits with a small notebook on the corner of the bench in his team jacket and watches (not with jealousy, Derek does not do jealousy) as Bully plays in his place.

He scribbles in his notebook, half hearted lines about sunflowers that follow the sun until their seeds grow to heavy to hold up anymore. Derek doesn’t know if they’re scientifically accurate (he could ask Ford, sitting a few feet over next to Coach Hall) but he doesn’t. He wants it to be true. Asking might only prove him wrong.

Eventually, he hears the telltale thumping of feet that means someone’s run around the rink, from the lobby or the bleachers, to the benches.

Miley Poindexter is jogging up to him, a finger pressed conspiratorially to her lips.

“Don’t tell Liam,” she says, crouching down next to him.

Derek is sitting at the very end of the home bench and Miley is kneeling on the rubbery floor to his left. He mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key.

She raises her head up slightly, eyes peering over the boards, and says, “Thanks, Nursey. I hate sitting in the stands.”

The way she fidgets, Derek thinks she might hate sitting anywhere, period. It seems obvious to him that she’d love to be on the ice. There’s always something you can see in someone else who loves the ice, some sort of look in their eyes or something like that. Or maybe it’s the fact she’s willing to kneel on hockey player spit soaked rubber to just smell the ice better.

“Why don’t you skate?” he asks her, letting his pen bookmark his page.

Miley shrugs and says, “I do. I just don’t compete. I used to. Had my axel and everything.”

“You quit?”

Miley says, “It cost money. It’s expensive to skate. Besides, I wasn’t very good. I’m too tall to be good at skating and, well, word got around in the competition circuits that I’m trans and people egged our house.”

She says all of this looking directly at Derek, as if daring him to say something, anything. She might not look like Dex--her nose is long, not short like his and her eyes are a few shades darker--but the way she looks at him, in defiance, is a Poindexter original. 

“That’s shitty, kid,” he says. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She turns back to the ice, apparently satisfied with his answer.

For a few minutes, Miley watches the boys run plays, her eyes following the puck. She looks completely at home. She’s only wearing a flannel that Derek recognizes as one Dex used to wear a lot, back when they were freshmen, but she shows no sign of being cold.

“It’s not like USFSA kicked me out or anything,” she says, like they never stopped their previous conversations. “I could still compete, if I wanted to, but it made Mom so mad and I thought Liam was gonna never let me out of his sight again. He kept skipping hockey practice to make sure no one was bothering me at the rink. I knew he needed hockey, so I mostly stopped skating. I still have my axel, though, and Bitty said it’s not half bad.”

Derek thinks she’s proud, like her brother, and kind (maybe like her brother; Derek is still trying to decipher Dex’s particular brand of kindness). He thinks he might be the first person she’s ever told the truth to, about why she’d quit.

He says, “You and Dex look out for each other.”

It’s not a question, but a statement.

“Of course,” Miley says, her voice firm. “Liam decided to be my brother when he didn’t have to. We chose each other. I might not be placing fourth in local competitions anymore, but Liam got to go to college and he’s probably gonna start getting NHL offers soon. He used to braid my hair. He deserves this.”

There is something in the way she says,  _ He used to braid my hair _ , that makes Derek want to cry. He loves Farrah. She’s a pretty good sister. She taught him to blow bubbles with gum and how to write messages backwards so they could only be decoded in the mirror. Derek loves his sister, but they’ve always had separate lives. They come together, sometimes, like points of a graph, before diverging.

Derek says, “So, smaller Poindexter, what do you think of our humble campus?”

“It’s okay,” Miley says with a shrug. “I’m not real big on school, but it’s pretty with all the fall leaves. And I liked the Haus, even through Liam’s an idiot who moved into the basement.”

Derek says, “He moved back upstairs.”

“Ah,” Miley says, “apology cookies worked.”

“You knew about that?”

She rolls her eyes. “He made me and mom bring the recipe. He always does things like this. Someone’s upset, he doesn’t know what to say, so he makes cookies or buys tiaras or drives eight hours.”

Miley watches practice, her back to Derek. Derek panics.

Honestly, Derek spent much of the summer wondering why Dex drove down to see him. At first, he thought Chowder had asked him, but both Dex and Chowder deny that. Now, he’s wondering if Dex somehow felt responsible for Derek’s...terrible summer mood (he refuses to call it a low because it wasn’t that bad, okay Farrah?) and decided to make an apology visit.

The thought makes Derek’s stomach clench.

He’s not good with acts of kindness. 

\---

“Bitty?” Derek asks the next day, after they’ve won their game.

Most of the rest of the team is off having breakfast (brunch) with their visiting family members. Derek and Bitty are the only ones in the Haus. 

“Oh, hey Derek,” Bitty says.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, cup of coffee before him, and his phone sitting face down. This is the first family weekend Derek hasn’t seen Bitty’s mom. He doesn’t want to think it has anything to do with what happened after the Falcs won the Stanley Cup, but he thinks it might. The thought upsets him. Bitty is one of the best people Derek knows. He deserves the best people in his life. 

“I’m--” Derek begins, but Bitty cuts him off.

“Derek Malik Nurse, don’t say you’re sorry,” he says quickly. “I can feel those gears of yours turning from across the table. It’s too early to be talking about this. You don’t have coffee and the pie’s not even out yet.”

“There’s pie?”

Bitty huffs, “He asks if there’s pie. Of course there’s pie. My mama texted me to say she loves me and wishes she was here, but she wouldn’t take our offer up on tickets. So, yes, there is pie.”

Bitty says  _ our _ and Derek feels a little less bad about all of it. At least Jack’s there for Bitty. He’d been annoyed the Falcs had a series of away games this weekend, otherwise he’d have been there himself.

Derek gets himself a cup of coffee, puts French vanilla creamer in it, and says, “That sucks, Bits.”

“Actions speak louder than words, I guess,” Bitty mutters. “Maybe she just needs more time.”

In Derek’s life, words have always spoken loud enough on their own. He’d written his first short story at five, the thrilling tale of a goldfish flushed into the New York sewer system. He’d written his first poem at seven, half in love with the stars. 

Most of his life, Derek has had his words. They’ve been his constant companions in an endless stream of childhood nannies, parents rushing off to Farrah’s dance concerts or auditions, and train rides to the ice rink. Derek has always held his words in the highest regard. They mean something.

But maybe words aren’t like that for Bitty.

For other people.

“We’ve got your back,” Derek says. “If you need a surrogate brother, I’ll gladly apply. I’ve never had a brother, might be fun.”

Bitty shakes his head and says, “Goodness, no. That’s sweet, Derek, but I don’t think I’d like having brothers. Too much like pee wee football, I think.”

Derek takes a sip of his coffee, “If you say so, but my offer stands.”

The two drink their coffee in silence for a few minutes, until the timer on Betsy II goes off. At that moment, Bitty stands up and grabs an oven mitt. This one is green and looks like a T-Rex head. Either Ollie or Wicks (or both of them) had bought it as a Haus-warming gift.

With the pie out and cooling on the counter, Bitty returns to the table and says, “I see Dex has moved out of the basement?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, ducking his head. He’s a little embarrassed to be talking about the subject with Bitty. He knows that, if Bitty were to ever rank the Frogs in order of favorite to least, Derek would be dead last.

“Glad you boys worked it out,” he says. “Miley was telling me--when I took her skating the other day--that Dex was working himself up over the whole thing. Apparently, he felt like an idiot the second he finished dragging his mattress down the stairs, but wouldn’t move back upstairs without you askin’ him.”

Derek says, “Sounds like Dex,” and, to his absolute horror, it sounds more fond than anything else.

“You know,” Bitty continues, “I’m really proud of you two. It took you long enough, but you’re actually friends now. I don’t know what happened with you boys over the summer, but it obviously did you both some good.”

Derek thinks about saying,  _ I don’t know what happened over the summer either _ because he honestly doesn’t. It’s been four months since Dex showed up on his stoop, wooed his cat, and made him watch  _ Star Wars _ and Derek still doesn’t really understand it. He doesn’t think about it, much, because trying to parse out what happened when he was out of it makes him feel weird. So he doesn’t.

Bitty’s phone vibrates. He turns it over, smiles down at the screen, and begins to type out a response. It’s obviously Jack who’s texting. The boy looks so smitten that Derek mimes throwing up into his coffee cup.

“Hush,” Bitty says. “Or I’ll never make you pie again.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” Derek protests.

Bitty says, “Do you really want to lose pie privileges for chirping me, Nurse? Is it worth it?”

“Dex makes passable cookies,” he points out.

“My kitchen,” Bitty counters. “I can ban him from it, so I’d shut my mouth if I were you.”

Derek mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key. While chirping your very much in love captain is a noble pursuit, pie is much more important.

\---

The next day is Monday, less than a week until the Samwell Review submission deadline, and Derek is having a terrible meeting with Professor Brisbois.

“Derek,” she says, sternly, which is an emotion Derek wasn’t sure she was capable of having until right this moment, “I’m not sure you want this. I asked for revisions. Nothing has changed.”

Derek sinks lower into the chair.

At their last meeting, he’d tried to explain that he didn’t feel the way this poem felt anymore. Brisbois had told him to tap into that old feeling, spark it, but all that had done was led to Dex moving out.

“I do,” he says softly.

She says, “Then try harder. Students don’t get published in the SR. This is an honor, Derek. It should be taken seriously. I expect that, when we meet again tomorrow, you’ll have actually done some revisions. You may go.”

Derek books it out of there, practically running down the stairs of the English building. He doesn’t stop until he’s out of the door, his feet on the sidewalk outside.

He walks in the general direction of the Haus, watching his feet and muttering lines under his breath. The lines made him feel sick, now. Knowledge could be like that, a double-edged thing, cutting deeper the more you know.

Derek, deep in thought and staring into his feet, trips over a curb and lands flat on his face. He lays there for a moment, blacktop digging into his check, before he hears thundering footsteps behind him.

“For fuck’s sake, Nurse, how are you supposed to be back on the ice in January if you keep this up?”

It’s Dex because of course it is. It’s also just after three, which means most people are done with class and heading home for the day, but Derek prefers to believe that it’s just his fucking luck that it’s Dex.

Derek starts to stand up. Dex huffs and reaches down to help him up.

“You okay?” he asks.

Derek is still trying to regain his footing, but the question nearly causes him to fumble again. Which just causes Dex to look even more concerned, which makes Derek want to scream because this, this, is much more dangerous than Samwell’s uneven sidewalks.

“It’s chill,” Derek replies, his voice pitching. “Definitely only bruised my ego, though Professor Brisbois already did a pretty good job of that for me.”

Dex nods in agreement and says, “Must be one of those days. My Real professor handed me back my midterm facedown.”

“Ouch.”

“Yup,” Dex says. “I guess I’m gonna be spending more time at Mayfield, groveling in her office hours, if I want to pass.”

Derek asks, because he can’t help himself, “That’s the test you were studying for, like, two weeks ago, right?”

What he doesn’t say is,  _ That’s the test you were studying for when I refused to turn down my music and then you moved out _ . 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I should have gone to the study sessions, but I hate those things. It’s just a bunch of high strung math kids stressing out, fighting over white boards, and nitpicking proof verbiage.”

Derek says, “Sorry I was being a jerk while you were studying.”

Dex shakes his head. “Nah, it’s not your fault. I was just kicking myself in the ass for not starting sooner or going to the study session and I took that out on you. It wasn’t cool of me.”

“Who are you and what have you done with William Jay Poindexter?” Derek asks, jostling their shoulders together.

Dex, surprisingly, tenses up and doesn’t nudge Derek back.

“I’m trying to be better about us,” Dex says in a rush. “You know, be a better roommate and friend. I was at the Counseling Center and Sara--that’s my counselor--was saying that maybe if I tried, like, saying how I felt about past situations might help. She maybe dared me to. It’s the only way she can goad me into trying any of her suggestions.”

Derek stops walking. They’re on one of the smaller paths, next to the Pound, and there’s a bench not too far off. Derek heads for it and Dex follows.

Once seated, Derek says, “I see Robert on Thursday afternoons.”

Dex lets out a stained laugh, “The only Samwell statistic bigger than the 1 in 4.”

Derek laughs too, just as hollowly. 

According to a study posted in the Swallow last year, 1 in 3 Wellies will seek treatment at the Counselling Center before graduation. It’s a staggering amount. Sometimes, Derek forgets about it. He doesn’t talk about his own mental health issues, but they’re very much a part of his life. He forgets it can be like that for other people too.

_ They used to lock the cabinets _ .

Derek isn’t surprised Dex goes to counselling, when he stops to think about it.

“We should go back to secret swapping,” Derek suggests. 

Dex huffs, “Only if we don’t call it swapping.”

“Bro bonding.”

“Somehow, that’s worse.”

They’re chirping again, which is better than the brief pause of Derek apologizing and Dex fumbling over conflict resolution techniques. Chirping is their safe place.

Dex says, “We probably owe each other, like, over a hundred secrets since June. We did say everyday.”

“That we did.”

“Guess we should double up sometimes,” Dex suggests, getting to his feet and dusting imaginary dust off his jeans. “Secret of the day number two, I was going to Annie’s to get some coffee. I reward myself for actually going to counseling because, without bribery, I’d probably ditch.”

Derek stands up too, stretched his cast-clad arm over his head, and says, “I was going to stare sadly at the poem I’m trying to get published in Annie’s while really drowning my sorrows in a frozen chai.”

“What’s a frozen chai?” Dex asks, beginning to walk to Annie’s.

Derek throws an arm over Dex’s shoulder and begins to explain the beauty that is a frozen chai. 

“It’s mostly ice cream,” Derek admits. “There’s some, like, boxed chai mix and espresso, but it’s mostly ice cream. I get a caramel drizzle on mine and whip cream.”

Dex says, “So it’s a frappuccino?”

“Pfft, no, it’s better,” he argues. “I didn’t think you know what a frappuccino was TBH, Poindexter. Secret Starbucks junkie, are we? Who knew?”

Dex rolls his eyes. “I have a twelve year old sister, Nursey. You met her, like, three days ago. Frappuccinos are like her favorite thing ever. Also, you know they’re not hard to find anymore, right? Starbucks does not hold the frozen coffee monopoly. McDonald’s has them, too.”

“Those are frappes and they’re delicious,” Derek says. “And Annie’s doesn’t do frappuccinos either. I think Starbucks copyrighted the phrase because, you know, money. Sometimes you live in a post-capitalism frozen coffee apocalypse.”

“Post-capitalism frozen coffee apocalypse would be a shawesome band name,” Dex admits.

Derek nods. “It would.”

Neither of them spend much of their time at Annie’s feeling sorry for themselves. Instead, they throw increasingly terrible band name suggestions at each other until Derek laughs hard enough to shoot frozen chai out his nose.

After Annie’s, Derek passes out for a short nap on his bunk while Dex sits at their desk, staring at his math midterm and trying to work out the corrections. Derek wakes up two hours later to Dex shaking his shoulder, asking if he’s going to dinner. Derek refuses. He wants to finish this poem before the morning.

An hour later, Dex returns with a stolen dining hall plate of sweet potato fries and an orange Gatorade.

“Dude,” Derek says, looking up from his computer in the middle of what he thinks might be the last stanza.

Dex shrugs and says, “Didn’t want you to starve.”

And Derek, who is just starting to understand the secret language of William Jay Poindexter, translates that to,  _ I was thinking about you _ .

“You’re the best roommate ever,” Derek says, opening the Gatorade bottle. 

Dex retorts, “You’re the worst roommate ever,” but there’s that lilt to his voice and his shoulders are loose and this is Dex joking, not serious, just chirping his roommate and D-Man and maybe, maybe, his friend.

Dex rolls his eyes and grabs his pajamas before heading into their bathroom to shower.

Derek finishes the stanza he’s on while Dex showers. It’s not the last one, apparently, because as he’s giving the poem a final readthrough, shoveling handfuls of fries into his mouth, another floats into his mind. Professor Brisbois might have liked the bitter, angry tone to Derek’s poem, but he didn’t. 

The last stanza reads:

Oversummer, after sun stained skin fades

three small freckles high on his cheekbone--

a new road.

Derek sends it to his professor, drinks his orange Gatorade, and smiles.

\---

“I don’t get why Whiskey was hiding that from us,” Derek says a week after submitting his poem to the SR for review, laying on the floor of their room. “We’re obviously an accepting bunch.”

Chowder, reclining in the beanbag, says, “I don’t know, Nursey, maybe he just wasn’t ready to tell us?”

Last night, Bitty came into the Haus in a panic. He’d apparently gone to a Lax party to rescue the Waffles from campus safety and a write up for underage drinking, only to find Whiskey making out with a lax bro. Derek, Dex, and Chowder had spent the next hour reassuring Bitty that Whiskey didn’t hate him and that, yes, if they had anything important they’d like to discuss they would totally feel comfortable discussing it with their captain.

It had been a long night.

“Maybe he didn’t think there was anything to tell?” suggests Dex, leaning over the side of his bed. He has his computer open, resting on the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to whatever homework he’s doing.

“What do you mean?” asks Derek.

Dex says, “Maybe he thought everyone knew? Like, this is Samwell. The 1 in 4 statistic holds even in the athletics department.”

Derek thinks about that for a moment, does the mental math, and shakes his head. If the 1 in 4 statistic holds in the athletic department, there’s got to be more queer Wellies on the team than just Bitty, Whiskey, and himself. Unless there’s, like, two or three more members of the team who aren’t out. 

“Or he just doesn’t feel close to us,” Chowder points out. “I bet Ford and Tango knew. Whiskey doesn’t like the rest of us that much.”

“Yeah, well, he’s dating a lax bro,” Dex adds. “We’re not exactly very welcoming about that.”

Derek agrees, “True. Like, date whatever boy you want. It could be a soccer boy, or a theater boy or even, gross, a ballroom boy. But not lax boys.”

Dex looks thoughtful for a moment. He reaches over to close his computer and set it at the foot of his bed. 

“Still, you think we’d know,” Chowder says. “Like, we’d have seen them around campus or whatever. I just feel so bad that he didn’t feel like this was something we’d all support him in. We’re all very supportive of Bitty and Jack.”

Derek pipes up, “And me!”

Chowder rolls his eyes and gives Derek a look.

“Nursey, the third thing you said to me on the Taddy Tour was that you weren’t straight,” Dex says, laughing.

Derek turns to face him. He doesn’t remember that. He hadn’t been in a bad place during his senior year in high school, so to speak, but he’d just gone through a horrible break up with the boy he’d thought he’d loved right before his visit to Samwell. It had been a terrible week leading up to the visit, but Bitty’d given them pies and Shitty had been a sight for sore eyes.

Derek asks, “I did?”

“You don’t remember?” Dex says, with a start. He looks a little bit crestfallen.

Derek shakes his head and says, “Sorry, dude. That was one of the worst weeks of my life and they’d just put me on lithium and I was a little foggy. I remember there were pies and you said something that pissed me off.”

“There’s always pies and I always say something that pisses you off,” Dex replies. “But, yeah, you walked right up to me and said, ‘I’m Derek Malik Nurse. I’m from New York, I play defense, and I’m queer A.F.’”

Chowder chuckles, “That sounds like Nursey! I remember you didn’t have a welcome packet for the tour, right?”

“Well, they couldn’t find it because I’d been admitted under my birth name and I’m a stubborn idiot who refused to tell them that,” Dex says, propping himself up on his elbow. “So I was running late because I had to wait for Coach Hall to explain the situation at admissions, get me registered with the right name, and get to Faber. I ran into Nursey rinkside.”

“It’s weird to think we didn’t know each other then,” Chowder says thoughtfully. 

Derek nods, but he’s not paying attention to the conversation anymore. He’s thinking about the Taddy Tour and what he’d apparently said to Dex. He thinks that, maybe, if he’d remembered the conversation he wouldn’t have been so quick to judge Dex on his ‘baking’ comment that day. Or maybe it would have been worse. Afterall, Derek can’t remember what Dex had said back.

Dex reaches down to nudge Derek with his left hand, the one not supporting his head, and says, “We’re still working on that, aren’t we? The whole getting to know each other thing.”

Derek grasps Dex’s hand briefly and says, “Yeah.”

“You guys!” Chowder exclaims, getting up from the beanbag. He crosses the room, pulls Dex off his bed and down to the floor with Derek. He wraps his arm around both of them, one over each shoulder.

“Chowder,” Dex says, squirming. “What the hell.”

“I’m just so glad that you guys are finally getting along,” Chowder says, because he’s a sap.

And honestly, Derek is too. 

_ We don’t really know each other _ , Dex has said in Derek’s kitchen, trying to convince Zams to come over to him.

It had been very much true, then.

It is less true now, but they still have a lot to learn. But Dex is trying, in his own way with gifts of cookies and gatorades. Derek is trying, too, trying to let his words brew a little long before they leave him mouth. He isn’t always good at it, but then again he doesn’t want to stop making fun of Dex, he just wants to stop offending him. He thinks Dex wants the same thing. He thinks that this might really be the start of their friendship, two years late, but not too late.

Derek says, “Me too,” and finds that he means it.

Dex says, “You’re squishing me, Chowder.”

Chowder lets go, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, Dex.”

“Nah,” Dex replies, ducking his head in a pisspoor attempt to hide the smile on his face, “it’s chill.”

Both Derek and Chowder laugh. 

Dex looks at both of them, pleased.

Derek thinks,  _ Could it have always been like this? _ From the beginning of their freshman year, could they have been like this? Could they have been the Frogs together, not vying for Chowder’s friendship, but existing like this?

Derek doesn’t know. At this moment, he thinks they maybe could have been like this from the get go. But he thinks of himself at eighteen, forced chill because he hated going into manic episodes, and Dex at eighteen who was only a few years beyond,  _ They used to lock the cabinets _ . They might not have been ready for friendship, then. They didn’t want to or know how to talk about their experiences, their--fuck, Derek hates to say it--trauma and they most certainly didn’t know how to listen to each other.

Part of him thinks they’ve wasted two years and then some half hating and half tolerating each other. Another part of him thinks how easily they could have wasted the rest of their time at Samwell doing the same. It would have been easy for Derek to never offer Dex his share of the room back, for Dex to never stumble his way through apology cookies and the sharing of secrets. 

This is the opportunity to try; to make up for lost time, to make right, to keeping on learning each other.

Derek knocks his shoulder against Dex’s. And, this time, Dex knocks back.

Chowder’s phone vibrates. He pulls it out of his pocket, with a dopey grin on his face. It has to be Farmer, texting him something lovey dovey.

“Fine,” Dex says, crossing his arms.

Chowder blushes and says, “I didn’t say anything!”

Derek looks to Dex and says, “I think that’s a double fine, don’t you Dexy-boy? PDA and denial of PDA.”

“Oh, definitely,” Dex agrees.

“How can it be PDA when Cait’s not even here?” asks Chowder, typing out a reply to the message he just confirmed is, in fact, from his girlfriend.

“How many heart emojis did you just send her?” chirps Derek, grinning. 

Dex replies, “At least three and one of them was the heart with the arrow through it.”

“Gross, definitely fine worthy.”

Chowder throws up his hands and heads towards the bathroom that connects their two rooms, clearly done with the two of them and probably on his way to meet Farmer.

“I take it back!” Chowder shouts, once he’s back in his room, through the open door to the bathroom. “I miss when you two hated each other. At least then, you couldn’t gang up on me like this.”

A few minutes later, Derek hears Chowder exit out his bedroom door and head down the Haus stairs.

Dex flops back on to his bunk and says, “He doesn’t.”

Derek takes Chowder’s vacated beanbag seat. “No, he really doesn’t. I don’t either.”

“Gross,” Dex says, but his face says he finds it anything but. “You using that as your secret today? Because it is embarrassing and something I didn’t know until you said it.”

“Is that the criteria?” Derek asks, smirking. “All swapped secrets must be embarrassing and unknown until their reveal?”

Dex makes a face and replies, “I thought we weren’t calling it swapping, Nurse, because it sounds like either a Secret Santa or a makeout session.”

“Secret Snowflake, god, not everyone is Christian.”

“Fine, Secret Non-Denominational Late December Gift Exchange,” Dex says, rolling his eyes. “I still won’t say we’re swapping secrets.”

Derek says, “Fine, what would you say we’re doing, then?”

“Learning about each other so we stop being assholes accidentally?” suggests Dex. 

“Not as succinct,” Derek points out. “Besides, you already vetoed bro bonding, which was my other choice. So, now we’re stuck being secret swappers. Deal with it, Poindexter. And, yes, that is totally my secret today. It’s your turn.”

Derek smiles and waits. Since June and more so since they moved back in together, he’s enjoyed learning a little more about Dex. When they’d first met--eighteen and lost in their own lived--they hadn’t bothered with much of the ‘getting to know you’ bits of college. They’d just yelled at each other and occasionally shoved each other in a less than friendly way. 

In the past week, Derek was learned that Dex hates avocados, is missing two molars--one hockey related and one not--and he learned how to style his sister’s hair watching youtube tutorials. In return Derek has shared that he doesn’t want to continue playing hockey after college except to coach pee wee hockey, that he has reading glasses but seldom wears them, and that he’s allergic to strawberries.

Unlike their summer secrets, most of the ones they share now are lighter. That isn’t to say they don’t have darker secrets--Derek knows he sure does and, from what Miley had said to him over family weekend, Dex does too--but they don’t share them. It’s always easier to be friends when you stay away from the heavy things.

“I don’t know what to say today,” Dex admits. He’d been looking at Derek, but turns away. “You pick.”

“It’s not a secret if I pick it,” Derek argues.

Dex counters, “Why not? I know you have things you want to know about me. You have to. I have stuff I want to know about you?”

“Really? Poindexter, I’m touched.”

Without missing a beat, Dex replies, “In the head. But I’m serious. Ask me something. If I don’t want to answer it, I won’t.”

“You sure?”

Dex shrugs and says, “I don’t know what to say about me, usually. It’s easier when someone asks a question, then I know where I’m supposed to start at least.”

So, Derek thinks back to their conversation with Chowder and what, apparently, were his first words to Dex.

“What did you say?” he asks, hands gripping his knees.

Dex, confused, asks for clarification.

“When I said, ‘I’m Derek Malik Nurse. I’m from New York, I play defense, and I’m queer as fuck’?” he asks, trying to keep the nerves from showing on his face and from causing his voice to waver.

For some reason, this feels important, as if some part of Derek remembers the conversation and knows it will change things.

Dex looks back at him. He looks at Derek a lot, now. He’d looked at him a lot before this summer, too, but usually with his eyes narrowed and his lips twisted--like Derek was annoying, or infuriating, or a puzzle that refused to be solved. Dex didn’t look at him like that, not much. Most of the time, like right now, he just looked. There was a slight tilt to his head, an upturn at the corners of his lips, and an openness Dex has once reserved only for Chowder, Bitty, and his own sister.

Dex says, “I said, ‘Well, I’m two of those,’ and practically ran away before you could figure out what I meant.”

There’s a beat.

“What did you mean?”

“You know what I meant,” Dex says, gently, like he’s talking to a scared animal. “You know what I mean.”

Derek thinks it over, rolling the conversation that feels like a half-remembered dream or a half-assed memory of some preschool years, in his head. He had, apparently, said three things about himself and Dex had, apparently, agreed to two.

They were, and still are, D-Men. They play beautiful defense together, but that’s not an option until Derek’s arm heals. So, there’s one.

Dex isn’t from New York, not from any part of New York. He’d told Nursey, four secrets ago, that he’d only ever left Maine for hockey games before his impromptu trip to New York over the summer. So, it’s not that one.

Derek finds himself watching Dex as he thinks and Dex watches back. He doesn’t turn his face into his shoulders to hide or ever slouch. Derek looks down at his hands and finds they’re open, not rounded into fists, and resting gently in his lap. 

Dex dips his head as if to say,  _ Come on, Nurse, don’t make me say it _ .

Because he’s the thing Derek has learned most about Dex in the last three months: Dex doesn’t use his words, not like Derek does. Dex hardly says sorry, or what he’s thinking, and he never says what he’s feeling. Derek has learned to divine these things by his actions: to apologize Dex fixes things, to explain a thought he use his hands to do most of the talking. He’s never had to parse what Dex is feeling, before now.

Derek has never seen Dex interested in anyone, romantically. He brought a girl from one of his math classes to Winter Screw as freshmen, but Derek had overheard him telling Chowder that the girl, Lila, had just broken up with her girlfriend from back home and they we’re just going as friends. He’s never really thought about it, much. It’s not any of his business and Dex had never said anything.

“You’re not straight?” Derek says, trying to fit the world back on its axis. It sounds like a question, but Derek thinks he already knows the answer. It’s the only logical interpretation of his reply, almost three years ago.

Dex nods.

Derek has a hundred more questions he wants to ask, but he doesn’t ask any of them. Dex had trusted him with this, he doesn’t need to pounce on him. 

“Chill, bro,” Derek says. “Sorry I was mad out of it on the Taddy Tour and didn’t realize you’d come out to me.”

Dex lets out a breath.

His eyes dart left and right, as if looking for someone even though there’s no one else in the room and, other than Ollie and Wicks in the attic, the Haus is empty besides them. In a rush, Dex says, “I’ve never had to tell anyone before. Everyone else just kind of knew. Most of them knew before me. It was in my file, so all the fosters knew. And my dad. Probably my birth mom, too, but I don’t know. Definitely my dad, though.”

The way he says the last part sends shivers down Derek’s spine.

“Congratz, welcome to the club,” Derek says, trying to shake the cold feeling resting in the pit of his stomach.

Dex cracks half a smile and says, “Thanks, but I’m pretty sure I was in the club first. I wanted to marry Keith Thompson from my mini-mites camp when I was five.”

“That’s, like, stupid cute, Poindexter. What did Keith Thompson do to impress five year old you?”

“He tripped a kid from the novice camp who made fun of my ears,” Dex says, grinning. “I saw smitten from that moment on. Alas, camp was only two weeks and our love story ended there.”

Dex looks at Derek, smiles, and says, “It’s probably for the best you don’t remember that part of the Taddy Tour. I immediately back pedaled on that and tried to play myself off as macho, which only made everyone pissed at me. I probably would have vomited if you tried to talk about it with me, when we were freshmen.”

Derek asks, “And now?”

Because he wants to know and because he can’t help himself. Because here is Dex, being honest, and here is Derek trying to put all the pieces together like they’ve suddenly switched places. Maybe they have. Maybe Derek is the puzzler and Dex is honest. 

“Now, I’m pretty sure it’d be stupid of me not to talk about it,” Dex says, looking down at his feet. “I can’t judge Whiskey when I’ve dodged coming out, too. We all have different experiences, you know?”

Derek thinks about Bitty, on family weekend, staring at the back of his phone.

He thinks of the look on Dex’s face during the last Falc game when Jack Zimmermann, Stanley Cup Champion, kissed his boyfriend on the ice. At first, Derek had thought Dex had been shocked by the display. Playing it back in his head, Derek thinks it might have been a different emotion. 

“You’re kind of awesome, you know?” Derek says.

Dex stretches his foot out from where he’s sitting on the bed and kicks Derek in the shin.

Derek yelps, “What was that for?”

“I can only take so much, Nurse, and you complimenting me is just too fucking weird,” Dex says. He doesn’t seem mad or upset at Derek. If anything, he seems content and a little bit flustered.

Derek files that piece of information away. Apparently, complements bother Dex more than chirps. Derek could definitely use that information in the future.

They’re silent for a moment. Derek is pretty sure Dex is trying to figure out how to move on from the conversation, so he says, “Thank you for trusting me with his moment,” in his best Shitty impression.

Dex full out laughs.

Derek is remembering June and what feels like ages ago, telling a boy he thought hated him that he was struggling with mental illness. 

Dex had done the same thing, but his Shitty impression had been, well, shittier.

\---

Dex does not make a big deal about coming out. He actually vehemently refuses to call it coming out because, according to him, he came out on the Taddy Tour so anything after is just coming out again and not worth recognition. He does, however, wait until Derek comes to team dinner to say anything. 

Derek tries not to let that go to his head.

Because it is late October, the conversation turns to Winter Screw. The Waffles are lamenting their poor prospects as, apparently, they know about four girls between them and one of them is Ford.

“What about you guys?” Hops asks, spreading peanut butter on his pancakes. 

It’s breakfast for dinner, a true Wellie favorite, and almost all of their plates have a stack of pancakes. Dex is eating eggs and bacon, though, which makes Derek nod in encouragement which causes Dex to steal a bite of his waffle. That boy had not sense of self preservation. Derek was going to have to start loading the right side of his plate with gluten free foods if this persisted.

“Got a girlfriend,” Chowder says, buttering a piece of toast. “I’ve never really had to worry about it.”

Bully throws his hands up and says, “We can’t all run, literally run, into the girl of our dreams, Chowder. Some of us have to have bad dates. You had to have bad dates before, right?”

“I went with a boy from the soccer team my freshman year,” Bitty says, shuddering. “He puked on my shoes. Went stag sophomore. Got a boyfriend. Problem solved.”

Hops groans, “Does anyone have Winter Screw advice that doesn’t involve dating someone?”

Chowder says, “Dex went with a friend once, right?”

“A friend,” Louis says, winking and elbowing Bully in the side.

“She was just a friend,” Dex says with a sigh.

Louis says, “Sure.”

He has a knowing grin on his face and Derek figures what Dex is about to do about four seconds before he does it.

“Definitely just a friend,” Dex says, taking a drink from his orange juice, “as we’re both very, very gay.”

There is a moment of awkward silence. Derek thinks at least one person drops their fork to the ground. Chowder is nodding in encouragement, which makes Derek think Dex had told him already. Bitty looks like the cat that ate the canary, probably because he’d figured it out all on his own.

Louis recoveres first and says, “Great, so I should just go with someone I’m not at all attracted to? That’s terrible advice and Bully already told me no.”

“I want an actual date!” Bully shoots back. “You just don’t want to go alone. Ask Hops.”

Hops grins and says, “He already tried that, but I told him I’m too pretty for no one to be attracted to.”

Bitty nods and says, “Know your worth, Waffles. You are better than a pity date and better than vomit shoes.”

“Lila wasn’t a pity date,” Dex defends. “I wasn’t going to go, she was sad because her girlfriend who was supposed to go with her broke up with her, and she said she’d help me study for our calculus final if I went with her.”

“So she bribed you,” Derek jokes, shaking his head. “I’m not sure that’s better than a pity date.”

Dex shrugs. “I got an A on that final and now me and Lila are study buddies for life. We have a corner of the math major lounge that says, ‘Mays for Gays.’ Most of the econ majors are too afraid to sit there because someone might think they’re gay.”

Hops asks, “The math majors have a lounge?”

“Yup,” Dex says. “It’s pretty sweet. It’s got its own printer and everything. Also, a mini fridge that definitely doesn’t have beer in it.”

“Think I could be a math major?” Bully asks Louis.

Louis replies, “I had to calculate tip for you at Annie’s.”

“So?”

“We don’t even tip in Sweden,” Louis continues. “I know percentages better and I still think American dollars look like Monopoly money.”

Dex shakes his head and says, “None of you are allowed to join the math department. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do about Winter Screw,” Louis pouts. 

From across the table, Wicks (or maybe Ollie, Derek still can’t tell them apart off the ice) says, “Dude, worry more about your game. You missed, like, six passes in practice. Winter Screw is just a party. I want to actually make it to the Frozen Four this year.”

There is an immediate chorus of knocks on the table. Hockey is a superstitious sport. No one mentions getting into the playoffs without crossing their fingers or knocking on wood. It just isn’t done.

The talk of Winter Screw dies down for the rest of dinner. 

If, when Derek goes back to get more waffles he gets gluten free ones, no one says anything. If, when Dex bites into them he notices, he doesn’t say anything.

On the walk back to the Haus, Bitty starts to say, “Thank you for trusting us with this moment,” but Dex cuts him off.

“I appreciate it, Captain, but I’ve never really not been out?” Dex says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his tan jacket. “I sort of came out on the Taddy Tour, everyone I know from home knows, and all of the math department knows. I don’t really want this to be a Thing, you know? I’m just Dex.”

Bitty says, “Still, you said it and saying it is hard. I think this calls for pie. I was thinking French Silk, because you like chocolate.”

Dex opens his mouth to protest, but Derek covers it with his hand.

“Sounds great, Bits,” Derek says, “I call dibs on Dex’s crust because it’s the best part and--Poindexter, did you just lick my hand? What the fuck?”

Derek pulls his hand back which is indeed covered in saliva. He shakes it and then wipes it on the arm of Dex’s jacket. Dex makes a face, but doesn’t say anything about the spit on his sleeve. Derek thinks he kind of deserves it. It is his spit, afterall.

As they walk, Derek and Dex fall to the back of the pack. Bitty is chatting with Chowder up front and Wicks and Ollie are laughing about something in the middle.

“You don’t have to eat my crust,” Dex mutters.

“Dude, you ate like half of my waffles,” Derek points out. “You’re going to be sick already. Don’t torture yourself. Besides, crust is shawsome. It’s, like, the best part of pie. All the rest is just goop--apple goop, chocolate goop, pecan and sugar goop.”

Dex says, “I’m fine. Don’t think I didn’t notice you switched to gluten-free ones. They’re gross, Nurse, gross.”

“You ate them!”

“Waffles are still waffles,” Dex says.

They walk in silence for a little. 

Two streets before they reach the house, Dex says, “You don’t have to, like, watch my gluten intake. I know what I can handle.”

Derek wonders, for a moment, if Dex finds his mothering annoying or smothering. When he asks, Dex says, “No, but you don’t have to.”

Derek says, “I want to. I got your back, Poindexter.”

Dex elbows him in the back and says, “Yeah, yeah.”

Derek can practically hear him smiling.

\---

In mid-November, Derek gets the dreaded email from the Samwell review.

It’s a Thursday afternoon, less than one week from Thanksgiving break, and he’s sitting in the Haus living room with Ford. Ford is editing a paper on different adaptations of  _ Hamlet _ , while one of the Globe productions plays on the TV. Derek is trying to focus on his copy of  _ Spring and All _ but finds himself being drawn in to the play on the screen.

Ophelia is just about to drown when the soft  _ ding _ on Derek’s computer indicates he has an email. He makes a strangled squeak when he reads the subject line.

“What’s up?” Ford asks, pausing the TV. 

On screen, Ophelia is laying in a pool. Her dress billows around her and flowers encircle her. Derek can see hydrangeas and lilies, honeysuckle and forsythia. There are even a few dandelions, some just starting to turn into little clouds of seeds.

“I submitted a poem to the Samwell Review,” Derek says, in a low voice. He hadn’t told anyone, except Dex in passing. He had been afraid to jinx it. Hockey players are, after all, a suspicious bunch and Derek is no exceptions. 

Ford lets out a low whistle, “That’s a big deal, right? It’s famous all over.”

“Yup,” Derek says with a nod. “Students almost never get published. The last one who did became poet laureate for the President.”

“Yikes.”

Derek agrees, “Yikes. They just emailed me.”

Ford asks, “What does it say?”

“I’m afraid to open it,” Derek admits.

If he doesn’t open it, there is still the possibility. The second he does, the possibilities disappear. Right now, he could be the first student published in over fifty years. If he opens the email, that dream could die.

Ford asks, “Want me to do it?”

Derek shakes his head.

He wants to do it himself, even though he’s scared. Maybe he wants to do it himself because he’s scared. He holds his breath and clicks on the email.

_ Dear Mr. Derek Nurse _ , the email reads,  _ On the behalf of the Samwell Review, I would like to offer you publication in our June issue. _

It takes Derek a moment to process what the email says. When he does, he stands up from the couch so fast his computer almost topples to the floor. Ford’s quick thinking saves it and sets it, gently, aside on the floor.

“I got it,” Derek says, his voice hardly a whisper and then growing stronger. “I got in. Ford, I got in! They want to publish one of my poems.”

Ford whoops and throws her arms around his neck. 

  
  


Derek laughs and swings her around, singing, “I’m getting published. I’m getting published!”

He lets Ford down and she enthusiastically fist pumps. “This has me so much more inspired to finish this paper. One of my friends is going to be a freaking published poet! I can write three hundred words about casting choices for Ophelia in English stage adaptations of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.”

Derek’s first coherent thought after he stops singing is,  _ I have to tell Dex _ .

His second coherent thought is,  _ Shit, he can’t read this poem _ .

Because Derek might have accidentally written a love poem. Because he wrote first, two years ago, about a boy he thought he knew, but didn’t, and he edited it before he knew Dex was gay and--why should that matter?

But it does.

It does.

Comparing someone you don’t really know to the boy that only loved you when the lights were out is one thing. Waxing poetically about someone’s hands is definitely another.

When Derek had gone to Professor Brisbois with the final version, she’d called it a love poem. Derek had thought she meant as a love-gone wrong poem, which is what he’d intended. But he might have misstepped. 

Scratch that, Derek is sure he misstepped.

Because the poem isn’t about James at all. Derek doesn’t even think about him anymore, not really. Seventeen feels like a lifetime away and Andover even more so. But Dex isn’t. Dex is here, in this place and in this lifetime and Derek might have done something very, very stupid a submitted a poem about loving him to a nationally recognized literary magazine.

He flops back down on the couch.

“Ford, bury me in all of Bitty’s throw pillows,” he says, voice muffled by couch cushions.

\---

He does tell Dex and Chowder, later that same evening, the three of them walking to dinner from Faber. Derek does want to whole team to know,but not yet. It feels like something fragile and breakable.

“So, they’re gonna publish one of my poems in the  _ Samwell Review _ ,” he says, offhandedly because Derek does not do serious and this is, minimally, a double serious situation on account of the whole being published thing and the maybe a love poem thing.

“Shawsome, dude!” Chowder says, holding out a hand for a high five.

Derek slaps it and says, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal,” Dex mutters, bumping his hip into Derek’s. “You’ve been talking about how it’s the best literary whatsit for three years and how you dreamed of getting in.”

Derek ducks his head. He did really like the SR. If he hadn’t been so busy with hockey, he’d have joined the student review staff is freshman year. But, he didn’t have time to read through their slush pile, especially during away games where he barely had time to stay caught up on his homework.

“We should celebrate!” Chowder suggests.

Dex says, “I have a Real problem set due tomorrow and I still have two problems, we can’t get wasted.”

“Boo!” Derek calls, trying not to seem disappointed. While the idea of sharing his poem with Dex is absolutely horrifying, the idea of him being happy for Derek’s success isn’t. It is actually feels kind of nice.

Gross.

Dex sighs, “I didn’t say we couldn’t do anything, Nurse, just that I can’t drink and finish this problem set. Now, celebratory Jerry’s dinner though…”

He trails off, smiling slightly, and looking at Derek from the corner of his eye.

Derek trips over a crack in the sidewalk.

Both Dex and Chowder rush forward to pull him up. Chowder has a grip on the sleeve of his jacket and Dex has his elbow. They both curse as they pull him to his feet.

“Fuck, are you okay?”

“Jesus, Nurse, do you want me to have to play will Bully all season?”

And Derek knows, because Chowder said it and he’s becoming an expert in reading between the lines when it comes to Dex, that they both are a little worried, but mostly relieved his face isn’t embedded in the concrete.

As Derek regains his footing, Chowder sighs in relief and Dex wipes imaginary dirty off his sleeve. He has a thought, then. It is not necessarily a terrible thought, but it is a striking one. Perhaps he hadn’t accidentally written a love poem about someone he didn’t love, but instead subconsciously wrote a love poem about someone he could.

He debates, for the briefest second, sitting down on the sidewalk and burying his face in the prickly, mostly dead bushes. But he doesn’t. Instead, he turns to his boys and says, “Cheya! Let’s do a Jerry’s dinner.”

Chowder fist pumps and says, “Oh yeah! I’ve been dying for their reuben. It comes with the best waffle fries and it’s all crispy. I might even have a milkshake.”

“Ooo, cheat day,” jeers Dex as they turn down the street in the direction of Jerry’s.

Chowder replies, “Shut up, Poindexter. I saved every shoot in practice. I am worthy of Jerry’s milkshakes.”

  
“Are they good?” asks Dex, a shit-eating grin on his face that clearly states that whatever he’s going to say next is a very savage chirp.

Chowder, who isn’t look at Dex because unlike Derek he can apparently look away without his stupid heart leaping out of his chest, says, “Duh!”

“Would you say that they bring all the boys to the yard?” Dex asks, straight faced and very serious.

There is a moment of silence, just the three of them walking to Jerry’s on a Thursday night. When the reach the restaurant, Chowder goes to open the door.

“Yes,” he deadpans, holding the door open. “They do, indeed, bring all the boys to the yard.”

Derek lets out a howling laugh, ducking under Chowders arm to enter Jerry’s. Behind him, Dex snorts and tries to follow Derek. Chowder, however, pushes in front of him to get in the door first. Dex sticks his tongue out at him.

Once they’re seated and staring at menus, Chowder asks, “Who else knows you’re about to be a published poet?”

Derek squints at the menu, wishing he had his glasses, and says, “Just Ford. She was in the Haus when I got the email.”

Dex pulls Derek’s menus further away from his face.

“You’re farsighted, dipshit, stop pulling it closer to your nose and maybe you won’t accidentally order a pickle and cheese sandwich,” Dex says, his own menu open to the sandwich section.

Derek mutters, “Nag, nag, nag,” without much heat.

“How come you didn’t tell us you were submitting to the Review?” Dex asks.

Derek fumbles, “Maybe I told Chowder. You never know.”

“He didn’t,” Chowder says, staking the creamers on the table into a pyramid. So far, he has a base of five, followed by a row of two. He has one poised on in his left hand to place on the very top.

Dex says, “I knew that.”

He doesn’t sound sure though. Derek thinks he might sound relieved. As if he would have told anyone else on the team and not Dex. They’re beyond that. Or trying to move beyond that. Derek isn’t about to ruin this...this whatever it is that’s going on by purposely excluding Dex.

“I didn’t think I’d get in,” Derek admits.

He’s a little embarrassed to admit it. Everyone on the team has heard Derek brag about his writing skills because, well, it’s the one thing he knows he’s good at. Some people are good at math, some people are gifted athletes, and Derek is a fan-fucking-tastic writer. But this isn’t like bragging that you can write a six page paper on Chaucer in two hours, with sources, and still get an A. This is personal. No one one the team has ever read any of Derek’s personal poems.

Dex says, “Bro, you worked your ass off if this is the poem that had you all pissy most of October. You went to office hours. I didn’t even know that English professors had office hours.”

“Thanks,” Derek says.

Dex grins.

Derek watches him peruse the sandwich section and reaches over to turn to page to the ‘Gluten Sensitive’ menu. Dex’s grin quickly fades to a scowl. Derek just finds it stupidly cute, which is the worst.

Once they’ve ordered (Dex an omelette, which is definitely gluten free and Derek totally doesn’t count that as a win), Chowder asks, “Can we read it?”

Derek swallows.

This is another reason he’d been afraid to share this potential publication news with them. They are going to want to read it and there is no way in hell either of them is going to finish it without drawing the same conclusion that Derek had a few hours ago. He isn’t sure he’s ready for that.

“No yet,” Derek says eventually, playing with the straw in his glass. “But, yeah, definitely.”

Chowder nods, satisfied, and the topic of conversation is dropped in favor of eating their newly arrived dinner.

Conversation between the three of them is easy. It is easy in a way that, just a semester ago, was unimaginable. It feels like coming home after a long vacation to sleep in your own bed, wrapped in the comforter you’ve had since you were thirteen.

Later that night, after dinner and homework and Dex staying up too late at their desk, scowling at his Real Analysis textbook, Derek turns the lights off in their bedroom. 

A little later than that, Derek hears Dex whisper, “We forgot to do secrets.”

“It’s still Thursday, I think,” Derek says, squinting down at the alarm clock on the desk. “Ask me something.”

It’s the first time Derek has posed the question. In the last few weeks, Dex has asked Derek a few times usually when he’s tired or stressed out. Usually, the secrets comes naturally. If Derek is honest, they are starting to feel less like secrets and more like conversations. Which, he supposes, might be alright.

The pause between Derek’s request and Dex’s question is just long enough that Derek thinks he might have fallen asleep.

“When can I read your poem?” Dex asks very quickly, his words tumbling over each other.

Derek, smiling stupidly in the dark, says, “June. The issue gets published in June.”

“Okay,” Dex says. “You ask me.”

And Derek, because he’s nervous and unsure and still not used to all of this, asks, “Do you really want to read it?” 

“Yes.”

There is no hesitation in Dex’s answer. There is also no urgency. It seems that Dex, in this case, is willing to wait. Before, Derek had always thought Dex to be impatient. He was constantly busy, his hands always occupied, and short if anyone interrupted a task. But, now, Derek knows that Dex isn’t impatient, just focused, and if he really wants something, he knows how to wait for it.

Derek hopes that, when the issue is published in seven months, he knows what to say to Dex when he reads it. A part of him hopes that, maybe, he can add another stanza and see where that new road goes.

“Night, Nurse,” Dex says into the dark. There is the shuffling of sheets, like he’s turning over, and then nothing but the hum of the Haus’s radiator.

Derek waits until he thinks Dex is asleep before saying, “Night, Liam.”

Seven months. That’s almost a lifetime in college time. Seven months ago, they were fighting for dibs. Who knows what seven more could do for them?

The question is, though, what did Derek want it to do.

In the quiet darkness of their room, his cast itching and maybe his heart, too, he thinks he knows the answer. 


	3. any movement saves you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from “Snow” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/185571731@N05/49099195118/in/photostream/)

“I can’t believe we still have another semester of this shit,” Lila says, throwing a dry erase marker at the board. “Who the fuck decided Real Analysis need a part two?”

Dex says, “The devil herself.”

“Professor Spiegelman,” finishes Lila, half heartedly.

It is an old joke. Professor Spiegelman is the head of the math department and actually a very nice woman who gives out candy during her office hours. She does, however, get the required courses. As such, Dex and Lila have spent many a day before finals cursing her very existence.

“I just know she’s going to ask about the completeness axiom and fuck that,” Lila says, throwing herself on one of the couches. 

They are working in the alcove outside of Professor Spiegelman’s office. It is well past midnight. They were behind because Dex had just returned from a disappointing away game against Dartmouth two hours ago. Their final is at 9:00 AM.

Dex joins her.

He flops on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table, and sighs. This class has been literal hell for Dex. He’d barely managed to scrape by with a C on the midterm. 

“I hate this class,” Dex says. “I hate all of mathematics. I’m going to switch majors to econ.”

Lila says, “You wouldn’t dare.”

Dex laughs, “No, I wouldn’t.”

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He takes it out and snorts half heartedly at Nursey’s text.

_ “did the math kids murder you?” _ Nursey’s text reads.

Lila rolls her eyes at Dex as she watches him type out a reply.

“You’re so screwed, Liam,” she says, shaking her head.

Dex wants to say something snarky to her, but he doesn’t because she’s sort of right. He is screwed on the Nursey front. He’d told himself in June that it didn’t matter if Nursey liked him back or not. Somehow, it matters now. Dex isn’t sure why, but it does. 

_ God, what if it’s more than a crush? _ Dex thinks, but quickly stomps out the thought.

Dex has never been in love before. He’d spent a lot of his childhood thinking that he might not deserve it. 

Dex texts back,  _ “No, unfortunately.” _

Lila leans over, rests her head on his shoulder, and says, “You know, he might like you back.”

Dex sighs. 

Lila is, outside of the Chowder and Nursey, his best friend. She’s smart, funny, and the best math partner. But she is also unflinchingly positive, which is great when you’re on draft four of a proof, but terrible when you’re in love with your roommate who doesn’t even really like you.

“He doesn’t,” Dex says, flatly. 

Lila starts, “Liam--”

“No, it’s fine,” he continues, interrupting her. “You don’t like someone so they’ll like you back. You like them because, well, you like them. It’s fine, I’ve accepted it. It doesn’t matter if he likes me.”

And Dex knows he’s lying, he does, and so does Lila, but because she’s a bro, she doesn’t say anything about it.

Nursey texts back,  _ “You coming back soon? Bitty baked disappointment cobbler.” _

Lila reads the text over his shoulder and says, “We’re not getting anywhere, Poindexter. Go back to your hickey bros. It is what it is. When in doubt, we can always bring back the invertible matrix theorem song from linear algebra. I’m sure Professor Spiegelman would love to hear it.”

“No one wants to hear me sing to the tune of Chaka Khan's  _ I’m Every Woman _ ,” Dex says with a laugh. “At least not again. God, I’m surprised Professor Valdez didn’t just fail us out of sheer annoying-ness.”

Lila says, “Because we were endearingly cute as freshmen and also I kick linear algebra ass.”

With that, Lila gets up from the couch, stretches, and heads for her backpack. She lives in one of the dorms as an RA, babysitting neurotic freshmen. Her dorm is on the way to the Haus, so Dex and Lila usually walk from Mayes together. 

Lila wraps a scarf around her neck, slips on a pair of gloves, and turns to give Dex a judging look.

Dex is still sitting on the couch, staring at his phone.

Talking (and texting) with Nursey is both the best and worst thing. While having the conversation, it feels like he’s flying. His insides warm and he finds it hard not to smile the whole time. After, when Dex is alone, he feels like he’s sinking. 

_ “Save me some,” _ Dex texts back, shoving his phone back into his pocket and grabbing his tan coat from the back of the couch. 

As they descend the stairs of Mayes, Lila hooks her arm through his. Sometimes, Dex wonders how they became friends as freshmen. Lila is the smartest person he’s ever met and the best mathematician in the whole department. One day, she’s going to solve some stupidly important, previously unsolvable problem and win the Field’s Medal. 

Dex is, if anything, a mediocre mathematician. He is good at proof writing, but awful at brute calculations. He can prove that real numbers are finite and denumerable, but he can’t take a second derivative using du/dv. His real talent as a student, as Professor Valdez told him when he declared his applied mathematics major, is his tenacity. What he really meant is that Dex doesn’t know when to quit and spent over fourteen hours on his first linear algebra problem set. 

Outside of the math building, there is a fine dusting of snow on the science quad lawn. There is snow falling lightly from the sky. Lila tilts her head back and lets a snowflake land on her tongue. She’s from South Carolina. Snow is a rarity for her and she still views it as a treat. 

Mostly, they walk in companionable silence. When they pass Lila’s dorm, she give his arm a squeeze before she heads up the sidewalk.

“See you tomorrow for death by in-class final,” she calls, tapping her ID on the door.

Dex gives her a mock solute and continues on his walk back to the Haus.

He thinks about the game, earlier, the last one before they go home for winter break. It had been a close one, which were always the worst. It had come down to a shot made by Ollie. He’d, unfortunately, missed. No one blames him, but it was still a hard, quiet bus ride back from Dartmouth. Nursey, now cast-less but still not cleared to play, had spent the whole bus ride silent.

When he opens the front door, most of the team is still there. Wicks and Ollie are nowhere to be seen, but the Waffles and Ford are there in addition to the rest of the Haus residents. They’re mostly in the kitchen, spilling over the edges of the kitchen table, but Nursey is stilling on the green couch, two plates of cobbler on the coffee table. One has a bite taken out of it and the other has the crumbs scraped off the top.

Dex waves at Tango, who’s standing in the kitchen doorway, and takes a seat next to Nursey.

“It’s peach blueberry,” Nursey mumbles, passing Dex a plate. “There was an apple, but I was in the shower and there wasn’t any left when I got out. Sorry.”

Dex takes the offered plate and says, “It’s okay. I like peaches more.”

“Me too,” Nursey says, “besides, I like the biscuit-y toppings better than the crumb ones. I ate yours. Can’t have you dying the night before your final.”

Dex says, “It might be for the best. I couldn’t get through a single proof without fucking it up.”

“You’ll be okay,” Nursey says, taking a bite of his cobbler. 

Dex changes the topic, “What about your final poetry paper? Did you manage to finish editing it? It was due at midnight, right?”

Nursey groans, “I mean, I turned it in? But it might have the worst paper I’ve written since high school.”

Dex takes a bite of the peach and blueberry goop and says, mouthful, “Thank fuck this semester is almost over.”

“I just want to get back on the ice,” Nursey mutters around a forkful of cobbler. “I felt so useless, watching from the boards. I think Ford thought about strangling me at least nine times.”

The way Nursey says useless does things to Dex’s stupid heart. Mind you, the way Nursey says almost anything does stupid things to Dex’s heart, but the useless strikes a chord.

“You’re not useless,” Dex says, setting his cobbler down on the coffee table.

Nursey shoots him a look. “I’ve been off the ice for two months. I threw off Bitty’s entire game plan by getting injured. And Bully’s a good D-Man, but he’s not…”

For a moment, Dex thinks Nursey is going to say  _ me _ , but he just trails off. 

“I hate watching,” he finishes, lamely. “I hate not being able to do things. I miss playing.”

Dex knocks his shoulder against Nursey’s and says, “We miss you too.”

He really wants to say  _ I miss you _ , but he doesn’t. Dex isn’t the kind of person to spill his feelings all over the place. He keeps them close. He’s been looser with them, recently. Lila managed to weasel his feelings out of him about two weeks into the semester and Miley had figured it out before he had.

_ Boy problems _ , she had said, in June, before Dex’s entire life changed.

When Dex had come home for Thanksgiving, he had said, “ _ So I might have boy problems _ .” Miley had just nodded and said,  _ “Since forever, duh. _ ”

“When we get back in January, we’re gonna light it up, Poindexter,” Nursey says, shaking himself slightly. “Just you wait.”

Dex, ears burning, says, “Just take it easy, okay? I don’t want the athletic trainer benching you longer because you tripped over Zams or something.”

“Pfft, as if she’d do that to me,” Nursey argues. “That cat loves me.”

Dex replies, “Only because I’m not there!”

Nursey wraps an arm around Dex’s shoulder, using his free hand to give his hair a tussle. Dex would call it a nuggie, but it’s less like Nurse is trying to cause him pain and more like...something else.

Dex pushes him off and digs his fingertips into the space between Nursey’s ribs. Nursey lets him go, but seems unphased. Apparently, his not ticklish.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nursey says, taking their empty plates and walking them into the kitchen.

While they were eating, the Waffles, Tango, and Ford left out the back door. Only Bitty is left in the kitchen, soaking the dish he’d baked the cobbler in. His phone is held between his ear and shoulder. It’s probably Jack on the other line, reminding Bitty that SMH can still make the Frozen Four, that this is just one game

Bitty gives both of them a slight nod of acknowledgement, turns off the sink, and heads up the stairs 

“I’m very lovable,” Dex mutters, leaning against the countertop.

Nursey gently drops the plates into the soapy water. “Oh, I know that, Dexy-boy, but Zams is a simple girl. She loves whoever feeds her. Which, right now, is Ramona the pet sitter.”

Dex chooses not to focus on the first part. Nursey didn’t mean it like that. Dex is lovable to his cat, not him. Obviously. Instead, he focuses on the second part of that Nursey had said, about the pet sitter.

“Pet sitter?” Dex asks, concerned. “Where are your parents?”

Nursey starts for the staircase and Dex follows because, well, they both live up there and he always seems to be following Nurse these days. He doesn’t mean to, but he finds himself drawn to his company and after he’d moved back in to their room, he’d decided to stop fighting it. Dex likes Nursey, likes spending time with him and maybe wants to kiss him. That’s fine. No one’s gonna beat him up over it. This time.

“Business trip,” Nursey replies, seemingly unconcerned.

In another life, before the dibs flip and their June cohabitation and their makeup in October, Dex wouldn’t have heard the slight dryness to his voice. But that is not this life and Dex does. He hears the way Nursey’s voice, musical and lilting like he’s always reading a poem, drop flat. There is no way for him not to worry, now.

“When are they coming home?” Dex presses, opening the door to their bedroom and depositing his backpack next to the desk. Their team jackets are thrown on the floor, discarded after a disappointing game.

Nursey, already dressed in his sweats, climbs right up to his bunk.

“February? I think?” he says, muffled by the shifting of pillows and blankets.

Dex climbs the ladder so he can look at Nursey when he says, “So you’re going home for break, alone.”

The thought makes his stomach churn. Sure, Nursey was alone over the summer when he’d visited, but Farrah had said that was only for about two weeks while she attended some kind of dance camp. Dex has assumed, maybe wrongly, that that was not normal. Maybe it was, for Nurse. 

Dex has never really been alone. He’s been ignored, in houses and group homes with too many kids, but even then he hadn’t been alone. When his mom adopted him, he’d always been surrounded by her and Miley and, if he was working, his Uncle Donall and newly acquired cousins. The thought of Nursey being alone, well and truly (if you ignored Zamboni) alone, makes him feel a little sick.

Nursey turns his head to look at him, blankets pulled up over his chin. 

“Well,” he says, “Farrah moved out to the Bronx, but I’ll probably see her. She got into this off-Broadway show when one of the principal chorus members broke their femur, so she’s got ten shows a week. She has the 25th off, which, you know, whatever we don’t celebrate Christmas or anything. I think we’re gonna get thai food. Or maybe sushi.”

“Nurse…” Dex says, trailing off. He curls his left arm around the ladder and reaches out to touch Nursey’s shoulder.

Nursey bristles under the touch, but doesn’t shake him off.

After a moment, he says “Look, it’s not a big deal. Late December isn’t a holiday season for us. It doesn’t really matter.”

And that’s true. Nursey’s family is, technically, Muslim, but Nursey doesn’t seem to be very devout. Dex isn’t sure about Farrah or Nursey’s parents. He knows there’s a couple of holidays they celebrate in the summer, sometimes, if they’re all in the same place

“Of course it matters,” Dex argues. “Going home is about seeing family, holiday or not.”

Maybe Dex is so adamant about family because, for almost ten years of his life, he didn’t really have one. When his birth mom died and his dad lost custody, he’d been flung into a system that didn’t want to adopt an almost eight year old probably gay boy with anger issues. If it hadn’t been for Miley, Dex is pretty sure he’d never have had a family again. 

“I’m used to it,” Nursey says, gently. “There’s a reason I got sent to boarding school, Dex.”

Dex thinks about Nursey, fourteen years old, being left in a dorm all by himself. The thought stings.

“Nursey,” Dex says, but stops himself. He doesn’t know what to say and he’s afraid, if he opens his mouth, he’ll let something embarrassing tumble out.

“Look, I’m fine,” Nursey says, looking directly at Dex. “I promise. You need to go to bed, you have a final in the morning. I’m not going to be responsible for you doing shitty on another math test.”

Dex sputters, letting his grip on the ladder falter, “That wasn’t your fault! I already told you that.”

Nursey laughs and it’s like the room has lightened. While Dex is still upset, it’s hard not to be upset when you learn that someone you care about is about to spend two weeks alone with their cat, it’s hard to be with Nursey laughing. It’s hard to be anything but stupidly happy when Nursey laughs, at least when you’re Dex.

“Careful, Poindexter,” Nursey chirps, “can’t have you falling on me.”

Dex thinks, almost without meaning to,  _ Too late _ . Because here he is, half in love with Derek Malik Nurse, and worrying about him going home to an empty house that looks like something out of a movie.

Nursey says, “I’m kidding I know it wasn’t my fault. But you do need to go to bed. Who the fuck schedules a 9:00 AM final?”

Dex sighs. Nursey is right. It’s almost two in the morning, much too late to be having this or any other conversation. 

“The devil herself,” Dex mutters, then he carefully begins his descent down the ladder.

Dex quickly changes into pajamas, turns off the light, and curls up under his dark blue comforter. Above him, he can hear Nursey’s soft breathing. He closes his eyes tightly and wills the stupid idea forming in his head to go away.

When he wakes up, he finds it hasn’t. If anything, it’s embedded itself further into his mind.

On his way to his final, to-go cup of Annie’s in his hand, Dex texts his mom,  _ “So, if I were to hypothetically invite a friend over for break would that be okay?” _

\---

When Dex finished his final, two hours and forty-six minutes into the three hour testing period, Lila is waiting in the hallway for him. Her legs are crossed, a textbook opened in her lap. She finished her final first, almost an hour ago. Dex is touched she waited for him.

Upon glancing up and seeing him, Lila slams her book shut and stands up, making a big show of yawning and cracking her back.

“She asked about the axiom of completeness,” Lila points out, shoving her book into her backpack.

Dex sighs, “I know. It sucked. I never want to talk about it again.”

“Until January 19th where we, inevitably, will have to talk about it again,” she quips.

“Nope, I’m dropping out now,” he replies, only about 15% serious. “I’m moving into the woods to become a local legend. Samwell is missing some cryptoid lore.”

Lilia ignores him. She swings her backpack over her shoulder and starts down the stairs. The math department is housed on the third floor of Mayes. The physics department is on the first floor. The second is mainly lecture hall, occasionally used for introductory stats classes, but mostly for history lectures.

“At least you’re done now,” Lila bemoans, pushing the front door of Mayes open. “I still have two more finals and that stupid dance presentation I have for advanced ballet.”

Dex says, “Your fault for taking number theory. It’s an elective, Lila. You could have taken literally anything, but you choose to take three math classes at once. And I still can’t believe there’s an advanced ballet class. What the hell.”

They cross the quad and head up the small path that leads to Samwell’s main thoroughfare. The snow from last night has melted, but the air is still frigid. Lila shoves on a pair of obnoxiously bright pink earmuffs shaped like owls that clash terribly with her blonde hair. Dex pulls his blue knit hat over his ears.

“One day, Poindexter, I’ll get you to take baby ballet with me,” Lila threatens, pausing on the main pathway. “It will be glorious.”

Dex replies, “I’m not wearing tights.”

“Like Caroline would make any of her students were tights,” she scuffs. “Anyway, I’m heading to the dining hall to grab a bagel and more coffee before my afternoon final. You coming?”

Dex shakes his head. “Nah, I’m just heading back to the Haus. I gotta call my mom, anyway.”

“Everything okay?” Lila asks.

“Fine,” Dex says, which is mostly true. “There just might be some changes to my travel plans. I’ll keep you updated.”

She says, “You better. Text me at least once a week so I know you didn’t die over break. And tell Leona that I love and miss her.”

“Your obsession with my mother is weird,” Dex retorts, rolling his eyes, “but yeah, I’ll tell her you said, ‘Hi.’”

With that, Dex and Lila part ways. 

Dex pulls his phone out of his pocket and sees a reply from his mother.

_ “Yes,” _ she has texted back.  _ “Call me after your final so we can talk it over.” _

Dex doesn’t even hesitate before he presses the call button.

If you had told Dex at twelve, fours years and change into foster care and one year into the termination of his father’s parental rights, that he’d ever have this he would have punched you in the stomach. After loving and losing Miley, he had pretty much given up on having any sort of family. When his social worker had told him years later, sitting in the ER with fresh stitches on his chin, that the woman who was adopting Miley wanted to take him in too, Dex has assumed it was just as a foster. He’d assumed that right until he had the adoption papers were in hand.

“Hey, kiddo!” his mom answers, the telltale far away tinny sound of her voice telling him she’s put him on speaker phone.

Dex instantly feels better. Leona has that effect on people. She is unflinchingly patient. Dex has only heard her raise her voice five times in the six years he’s been a part of her family.

“Hey, Mom,” Dex says. 

Sometimes, Dex tries to picture his life without Leona Poindexter. It would have been easy for her to adopt Miley--sweet, young, still perfectly adoptable Miley--and never listen to her stories of a big brother with any seriousness. It would have been easy for her to say that finding and adopting Dex was impossible. Afterall, Miley could only remember him as “Liam”, no full or last name, and they weren’t even related. But Leona hadn’t. Miley had told her stories of her brave big brother Liam and Leona had decided to take in an almost sixteen year old whose face was more bruise than skin.

Without her, Dex doesn’t know where he’d be. Not at Samwell, that’s for sure. He likes to think he’d have gone to community college somewhere and gotten a good job as a carpenter or something. He definitely wouldn’t be less than a year out for NHL prospects.

Mom clears her throat and says, “So, who needs us?”

“Nursey,” Dex says, in a rush, “my roommate, you know?”

“Uh-huh, with the cast,” she replies.

In the background, there is the sound of a knife hitting a cutting board. It’s almost noon at home, which means Mom is helping to cook up dinner for the bed and breakfast. While it is off season, the restaurant is a popular dinner spot with the locals. 

Dex replies, “The cast’s off, now. He’s not cleared to play yet, but as long as he doesn’t do anything too stupid he should be in January.”

“That’s good,” she hums. “What’s this about break though?”

Dex swallows. Nursey hadn’t said that his over break home situation was a secret, but Dex still felt like telling his mother was a breach of trust. He often feels like sharing the details of any of his personal conversations with Nursey is a breach of trust. One of the problems, he supposes, with building a friendship on secrets.

In the back of his mind, Dex remembers an old parable his father used to tell him, about the man who built his house on sand. Nothing strong comes from a shaky foundation.

Dex quickly stomps the thought down. Anything his father considered good advice should be thrown out. Dex doesn’t even know where the man is. He could be dead, for all Dex cares. But, he’s pretty sure he isn’t. Dex usually checks the obituaries from his old town at least once a year, checking to see if the old man is finally where he belongs, six feet underground in an unmarked grave.

“He’s going home alone,” he eventually says. 

His mother doesn’t rush him. She’s never rushed him. If anything, she’s done her best to slow him down. When he’d started socking away money, weeks after arriving in Winter Harbor, she’d suggested he get a savings account instead of stashing it under his bed. She had even made sure that her name wasn’t on it, as Dex had been convinced she’d eventually kick him out and take all his money. 

Dex continues, “He says it’s not a big deal because he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but he’s going home to a big, empty house with just his cat and...I don’t know, Mom. I can’t let him do that. It doesn’t matter if he’s not missing Christmas. Everyone else is going to have someone waiting for him and Nursey won’t.”

He stops, before he says something embarrassing. He’s pretty sure she knows he likes Nursey. If she hadn’t figured it out on her own, Miley most certainly has already told her because Miley has a big mouth. But she won’t tease him about it, at least not yet.

“That does sound kind of lonely,” his mother says. “Are you asking my permission or telling me he’s already coming?”

Dex says, “Permission. I haven’t asked him, yet. He might say no.”

“William Jay Poindexter, do not let that boy go home alone for two weeks,” she warns. “He doesn’t have to stay the whole time, but he should at least spend some time with us. He can even bring the cat, if he wants, Lord knows your sister wants one. I know he’s a good friend of yours and any friend of yours is welcome here, you know that.”

Dex asks, “Where will he sleep?”

Their house has only three bedrooms and, to be fair, Dex’s room is more like a loft than a bedroom. It doesn’t even have a proper door, just a sliding barn door his mother had installed when he’d moved in.

“Well,” his mother says, “I think I can manage to carry the futon from the screen porch up there, if you boys help me out. It’ll need to be vacuumed, but I think that’d better than borrowing Donall’s old air mattress from his boys’ scout days. That thing is more duct tape than air mattress, at this point.”

Dex agrees, promising he’ll get Nursey to come (with or without the cat, his mother isn’t picky on that regard), and hangs up the phone.

The rest of his walk back to the Haus is uneventful. While Dex is worried about how Nursey will react to being offered a place at the Poindexter house over break (he’s noticed that Nurse sort of hates to be given things, most of the time, except for when it’s food), he no longer has the dread of his Real Analysis final hanging over his head. In fact, Dex is officially done with the first semester of his junior year.

_ Only three more _ , he thinks.

It’s strange, how fast time has done. There were days when he was a kid where he thought he’d be twelve, thirteen, fourteen forever. He thought his life would be foster home to foster home to group home, three new schools every year. Each day, back then, seemed to drag.

How much things had changed.

Dex pauses at the front door of the Haus. He’s not afraid of asking Nursey, not really, except that maybe he’s afraid of the actual asking. He has this thing about asking. It’s something Sara from the counseling center has been trying to work on with him. It hasn’t been going very well, not really.

See, the thing is, growing up questions weren’t a thing he was allowed to ask. His father thought kids asked too many question and after he asked if he could marry Keith Thompson, well, it only takes one hockey stick to the face to stop that. Then there’d been Mr. and Mrs. Fourth Foster Home, where they’d locked the cabinets in between meal times and, if you asked for more food, gave you less the next meal. So, yeah, Dex knows better than to ask questions.

But this is Nursey. This is the Haus. This is Samwell. This is the second safest place Dex has ever been and all he wants to do is ask a friend to visit.

He can do this.

Dex opens up the door, waves at Ollie (or Wicks, he still can’t tell them apart without their jerseys on) on the couch, and takes the stairs two at a time. It’s better to do it now, before he loses his nerve.

Nursey is sitting in the beanbag, laptop balanced on his knees. Upon seeing Dex, he looks up, smiles, and closes the computer.

“Yo, Dexy! How’d the final go?” he says.

“Fine,” Dex says, which is mostly a lie. “Do you want to come to Maine with me?”

The question comes out in a rush. Dex says it so fast that, for a moment, he thinks Nursey didn’t understand him. Nursey is just staring at him, head to the side, as if Dex is the axiom of completeness and he still doesn’t really get it. Dex lives with the momentary horror of having to repeat himself and ask again, but just then Nursey blinks

“What?” Nursey aska.

“Maine. Home.” Dex can’t bring himself to repeat the question, just the snippets of pertinent information. He feels like an idiot, standing in his own room in wet shoes, his winter coat on, and backpack still slung over his shoulders.

“I know you live in Maine, Dex,” Nursey says sarcastically. “Why are you asking me to come there?”

Dex blinks. Had Nursey forgotten their conversation last night? It had been late, but he hadn’t seemed to be in any sort of a funk.

Dex clarifies, “Because you don’t have anywhere to go.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Nursey repeats, bitterly. The mood in the room is suddenly much tenser and Dex is reminded why he doesn’t ask questions. “That better not be pity I hear, Poindexter. We don’t do that shit.”

Dex wants to laugh. He doesn’t pity Nursey. It makes him sad that he’s going home to an empty apartment, but it’s not pity that drove him to call his mom and ask her permission for Nursey to stay. It’s love. Stupid, stupid, incessant love. Dex is beginning to hate it and the things it makes him do. 

“It’s not pity,” he says simply because no way in hell is Dex adding the whole love bomb to the conversation. Nope, not today. Probably not ever. Dex is carrying this one to the grave.

Nursey scoffs, “Sounds like pity.”

“Well, it’s not,” Dex defends weekly. “I don’t feel sorry for you. You don’t even have to come.”

That is most definitely a lie and Dex regrets it the second it leaves his mouth. This is Nursey’s out and he’s going to take it and Dex, Dex is going to have to get real persuasive without touching his feelings with a ten foot pole.

“Okay, so I won’t.”

“Nursey,” Dex begins, but he doesn’t know where to go from here. 

“You said it didn’t matter,” Nursey replies, curtly, “so I’m saying no. I’m going home to my cat.”

Dex feels instantly defensive. Of course this matters. He matters. Dex is putting himself out on a limb here because, if he doesn’t, he’ll drive himself absolutely nuts worrying about Nursey nonstop for two weeks.

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” he says softly. “God, you get so defensive sometimes.”

Nursey fumes, “Me? Defensive? Pot, kettle.”

Dex flushes. Nursey does have a point. They’re both stubborn, too stubborn for their own good. He thinks there’s a Dr. Seuss story about this, two creatures who only walk in perfectly straight lines refusing to budge and staying stuck in their spots until they die. 

“Yes, you,” Dex says. “Don’t make this about me. And my mom says you can bring the cat.”

“You told your mom?”

“Yes, I told my mom,” he replies. “So I could ask her if you could come home for break, dipshit.”

For a moment, Nursey looks touched. Dex wonders if this has ever happened before. Nursey’s been away from home since he was fourteen. This can’t be the first time his parents have bailed on a break.

“Well, I didn’t ask you to,” Nursey retorts, back on the defensive.

“No, you didn’t,” Dex agrees. “That’s kind of the point.”

Nursey furrows his brow and asks, “The point of what?”

Dex wants to scream. They’re getting way too close to feelings territory for his liking. But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a moment to remember why he wants Nursey to come to Winter Harbor over break, why he made oatmeal scotchies, and why he drove eight hours in his mother’s ugly Tacoma in June: because he cares about Nursey, whether Nursey cares about him in return or not.

“Just the point!” Dex huffs, trying to figure out what he can tell Nurse. “I don’t know. I’m not asking you because I have to. I’m asking you because I want to.”

That causes Nursey pause. Dex isn’t sure what about the phrase causes it, but he’s glad for the lessened hostility

“You want to?” Nursey asking, seeking some kind of confirmation.

“Yes, I want to,” Dex repeats, embarrassed. It’s hard enough to say that out loud, it’s even harder because it’s Nursey and he’s beginning to mean it in ever sense of the word. “I want you to come back to Maine with me.”

There is a moment where Dex looks at Nursey and Nursey just looks back. Dex tries to keep his face encouraging without his eyes turning into neon signs that read, ‘I love you,’ in bright red. It is a fine balance

Nursey asks, “And Zams can come too?”

Dex laughs, “Yes, your cat can come too. She likes me better, anyway.”

Suddenly, it’s like last night or Annie’s or maybe even late nights on the white couch in Nursey’s Manhattan brownstone. It is Nursey, at Jack’s party, leaning over to pass Dex a beer even though it most definitely isn’t gluten free. It feels easy again, like swapping secrets.

Oh, god, now Nursey has him saying it too.

“Lies,” Nursey says, but there’s an upturn to his lip that makes Dex almost a hundred percent certain he’s being chirpped.

“So, are you coming?” Dex asks.

Nursey sighs, “Dex…”

Dex knows Nursey is weird about gifts, but this isn’t really a gift. This is just an offer, except Dex really doesn’t want him to say no.

“Dude, we offered,” Dex says, firmly but not unkindly. “You’re not, like, a burden or anything. In fact, you’ll be doing me a favor by coming.”

And he would. Because, six months ago before everything got all complicated in his heart or maybe right in the middle of it, Dex’s mom had said that worrying about people was a side effect of caring. And, boy, did he worry about Nursey.

Nursey looks skeptical when he asks, “Yeah, how’s that?”

“I won’t spend the entire time worry about you,” is Dex’s flippant reply

Nursey clutches his heart and says,“Aww, Poindexter, I’m touched.”

Dex backpedals, a skill he’s particularly good at. “Worried you’ll hurt your arm again, dufus.”

“Sure,” Nursey replies, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

Dex ducks his head. He can feel his ears warming as he mutters, “Shut up.”

“Shutting up,” Nursey says.

They stand there for a moment, in awkward silence, Dex with his red ears and Nursey with his knowing smile.

_ He might like you back _ , Lila had said.

Dex stamps out the thought. Boys don’t like Dex back. Sure, he’s a good hockey player and goes to a good school, but he’s ten different kinds of fucked up. Nursey is handsome and, when he’s not being an asshole, kind of a good person. Dex is sure he has better crush prospects than his slightly (okay, more than slightly) traumatized roommate.

“So, you’re coming?” Dex asks, his voice soft and maybe a little uncertain.

Nursey looks at him, then away.

“Me and Zamboni.”

“Good.”

Dex celebrates, for a moment, before the panic begins.

Nursey is coming home with him. Nursey is coming to Winter Harbor, where there’s fuck-all to do except skate and Nursey isn’t supposed to do that. Nursey is going to see Dex’s teenage bedroom, with the hole in the wall he’d punched at sixteen and then his mother had framed because she’s kind of the funniest person in the world. He’s going to see their small, cramped house with its chipping paint and touchy heating.

It feels like the perfect battleground for a fight.

Dex vows not to let it become one.

\---

In the morning, before Nursey has gotten up, Chowder laughs himself hoarse when Dex tells him about Nursey coming to Winter Harbor.

“It’s not funny, Chowder,” Dex mumbles into his Rice Chex cereal.

Chowder wipes an imaginary tear from his eye because all of Dex’s friends are dicks.

“But it is,” he says. “This is like straight out of a Hallmark movie except, you know, it’s not straight.”

Dex says, “It’s not like that. We’re not talking about this.”

“Oh, so you don’t have a big, fat gay crush on our resident klutz?”

“Chowder, you don’t have to add the ‘gay’ in there. I’m gay. All of my crushes are gay. That’s kind of the point.”

“So just a big, fat crush?”

“Yes. I mean, god, stop asking me about this.” 

Chowder laughs, again, and takes a seat across from Dex at the Haus’ kitchen table. He reaches for the box of vanilla Rice Chex and shoves a handful of the little squares into his mouth.

“Ew,” says Chowder, chewing with dissatisfaction, “this is nasty, Dex.”

Dex shrugs and says, “It’s gluten free. The chocolate one is better, but they were out at Murder Stop and Shop and I didn’t want to go to Racist Stop and Shop, ya know?”

Chowder nods and takes another handful. “It kind of grows on you, though.”

“So does fungus,” mumbles Dex through a mouthful of mushy, fake-vanilla flavored, gluten-free cardboard.

They’re quiet for a moment, sitting at the kitchen table, eating terrible cereal for a lack of anything better to do. Dex finds himself lost in the silence, in the slow and easy movements that come from friendship and familiarity. For a long time, Dex didn’t think he’d ever have any of this kind of peace. He still got caught up in it, sometimes. 

Chowder gets up when Dex goes to put his empty cereal bowl in the sink. He places a hand on Dex’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

“You’re not a bad friend, Dex,” he says and Dex is reminded of another conversation, two seasons and one state (or two, depending on how you drive) away.

Dex doesn’t know what to say. Afterall, when does he? His words are too often wrong or insulting. So, this time, he doesn’t try. He just wraps his arms around Chowder, cereal bowl still in hand, and squeezes.

“This shit is, like, super touching,” says Nursey, leaning against the doorway, “but we’ve got to catch the shuttle to Boston so we can get on the train before noon.”

Dex groans. He is not looking forward to the amount of time they're about to spend on trains, not to mention the three hour car ride from Brunswick to Winter Harbor to follow after. However, it’s the cheapest way to get them home and one that will allow them to bring Zamboni with them. It is, however, going to be a total of 15 hours on a train.

“I’ve been up since six, Nurse,” Dex retorts, letting go of Chowder and setting his bowl in the sink. “I’m ready when you are.”

Nursey gestures to his backpack, slung over one shoulder, and kicks his duffle bag. “I’ve got everything I need here, Dexy-boy.”

If Dex were Lila, maybe he would say that after kicking his bag Nursey looks over to him like maybe, maybe, Dex is something he needs, too. But Dex is not Lila. He isn’t. He’s Dex and Dex has never been necessary. He has a laundry list of people who don’t give a fuck about him. He can list the people who really care about him on two hands and still have fingers to spare.

Dex squashes the thought before busying himself by grabbing a half-opened box of granola bars from the communal cabinet.

“The 9:15 Boston shuttle should be loading soon,” Dex says just to have something to say. 

Things still feel off between them, almost tangibly strained. No matter what they do, it seems, things never stay easy and good for long between them. Dex knows it’s probably his fault--most things are--but he doesn’t really regret making things awkward this time. Thinking about Nursey alone in that stupidly empty house with his giant monster of a cat makes something in Dex’s chest ache.

_ That’s your heart, stupid _ , his inner Miley says.

\---

Their train is somewhere in Maine when Nursey clears his throat and asks something real, not just chirps and comments on the passing scenery. 

“You sure your mom doesn’t care that she’s got to drive three hours to get us from the train station at, like, midnight?” Nursey asks, shifting Zamboini’s carrier on his lap. He’s tried to put it on the empty seat across from them, but every time he does she meows pitifully. 

Dex reaches for the cat carrier with a sigh. “Give me the cat.”

“No, it’s fine,” Nursey argues, like an idiot. Dex knows sitting with a nearly twenty pound cat on your lap for hours can’t possibly be comfortable.

“Yeah, sure, you’re fine,” Dex says sarcastically.

Nursey winks and says, “Glad you’ve finally noticed.”

Dex feels the back of his neck heat up at the comment. When Nurse isn’t pissed off at him, his chirps tend to cross into flirting territory. Or maybe they don’t and Dex just isn’t used to having a crush on someone who doesn’t want to knock all his teeth out. Honestly, it’s hard to know. 

“Give me the fucking cat, asshole,” Dex mutters, half into his shoulder.

Nursey laughs, but picks up the carrier and passes it to his left. 

Zamboni lets out a very sad sounding little mew.

“It’s okay, baby girl,” Nursey says softly to her. “It’s just Dex. You remember him, right? Big ears and terrible taste in flannels.”

Dex huffs, but ignores the comment. Instead, he hunches over the bright pink cat carrier in his lap to peer at Zams through the little metal bars on the front. He gingerly wraps his fingers around the bars and lets her sniff at him, hesitantly. Cats can be skittish, even big fluff balls like Zamboni. Dex knew you had to give them time to warm up to you.

After a few minutes of tentative sniffing, she headbutts his knuckles.

“Hey there, Zams, hope you like snow because there’s gonna be a shit-ton where you’re going.”

Nursey says, “I packed her harness, so we can see if she wants to go out sometime over break.”

“Of course you’re one of those weirdos who walks their cat,” Dex says, shaking his head. “Miley’s gonna get a kick out of it, I hope you know. She’s wanted a pet for as long as I’ve known her.”

Dex turns to look at Nursey, his hand still hanging on the bars of Zam’s cat carrier. Nursey is looking at him, smiling.

It’s a nice moment.

“Your sister is, like, 80% of the reason I agreed to go to Bum-fuck Nowhere, Maine,” Nursey says, ruining it.

Dex takes his hand away from Zams so he can shove Nursey in the shoulder.

“You’ve met her, like, once,” Dex says, ignoring the stupid swoop in his stomach.

_ A boy you like thinks your family is cool _ .

God, Dex is twenty, not twelve. He needs to get ahold of his stupid, hopeful heart. Hope and Dex do not mix.

Nurse says, “She hung out with me during open practice. Said she hates sitting in the stands.”

Dex looks over at him, eyebrows knitted together. Miley had failed to tell him that. He’s going to strangle her. 

“Chill,” Nursey says, leaning his head back against the seat. “She didn’t say anything too embarrassing.”

Dex, trying to stop the laundry list of things she could have told him, replies, “Her face is embarrassing.”

Nursey laughs, “And one-third of your phone’s homescreen.”

“Shut your face,” Dex mutters. “I regret this entire invitation. I regret this friendship. I regret everything here except for Zams. She can stay.”

Nursey’s laugh falters. He drops his eyes to look down at his hands, knotted in his lap. 

It takes Dex about three seconds to start feeling like an idiot. Nursey had, less than ten minutes ago, asked for reassurance that his visit wasn’t going to be a burden. And Dex, like an idiot, hadn’t bothered to provide any. He’d just asked for the cat.

“My mom wants to know what kind of tea you like, so we have it in the kitchen,” Dex says, slowly, looking over his left shoulder to stare out a dark window. “We’re coffee people, except for some Lipton shit we sometimes use to make sun tea in the summer.”

Nursey hums a little, but otherwise stays silent.

Dex continues, as if he’s afraid that if he stops the words will never come out, “Miley wants to take you to her favorite used bookstore. She’s texted me three different pictures of homemade cat toys she’s made in the last 36 hours. They’re all ugly and covered in feathers, so I’m sure Zamboni will love them. They’re really excited you’re coming to visit.”

There’s a moment of silence. Dex hears the steady  _ fawhum, fawhum  _ of the wheels going over tracks and the soft snoring of the old lady sitting behind them.

In a low voice, Dex admits, “I’ve never brought a friend home.”

At that moment, Dex gathers his courage to look away from the window and toward Nursey. Nurse is still looking down at his hands, but some of the tension has drained away.

“Never?” Nursey asks to his hands.

“Never,” Dex agrees and then adds, “not since before I went into foster care.”

Admitting it to anyone else would have been embarrassing. Admitting it to Nursey feels almost relieving and, maybe, a little exciting too. Dex had spent a long time thinking he’d never have a home to invite anyone to. He has one, now, and it’s kind of awesome.

Nursey looks up and says, “I’ll try to live up to expectations.”

“Trust me,” Dex says, “me and Miley have, like, four friends between us. My mom is probably jamming to a self-curated ‘my kid is well-adjusted’ playlist while driving to Brunswick, if she’s not there already.”

Nursey takes out his phone, looks at the screen, then quickly looks away.

“It’s almost eleven.”

Dex nods. “We’ve got, like, forty minutes left.”

Nursey yawns, “I think I might try and get a power nap. You good with Zams?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

\---

Dex wakes up to the soft clatter of someone washing dishes in the kitchen below.

When they’d gotten home from the train station, it had been almost three in the morning. All they did was let Zamboni out of her carrier--she’d bolted under the sofa, a little scared from the fifteen hour journey--and climb the stairs to the loft. Dex had been too tired to worry about what Nursey would think about the little red house the Poindexters lived in.

Now, however, Dex is wide awake and painfully aware of his surroundings. 

The loft--Dex’s room--is cramped with his full size bed and the futon from the sun room. There’s barely any space between the two. The futon is also blocking the wardrobe, which is fine because that’s mostly old hockey stuff, and the dresser, which is less fine because that’s were all of Dex’s home clothes live.

He finds himself staring at the hole in the wall, next to the wardrobe, with the stupid frame Mom had put around it. There was also a little notecard, a bit like a museum placard, that read  _ Misplaced Anger by Liam Lynch (2012) _ . The last name Lynch had been scribbled out in red and  _ Poindexter _ was written above it in Dex’s sloppy handwriting.

There’s a slightly louder clatter from down below, followed by some colorful cursing.

Dex rolls his eyes.

Nursey’s futon is empty, but the sheets Mom had put out are rumpled and there’s a pillow on the floor. That means Nursey had at least attempted sleep.

Dex sticks his hand under his pillow, looking for his phone. It’s at less than 60% battery, which is worrying, and it’s also past two o’clock in the afternoon. Mom had to leave for work at noon, so it’s probably just himself, Nursey, and Miley in the house. 

Something breaks in the kitchen below, the sound of glass hitting ceramic.

Dex gets up, plugs his phone in to charge, and takes the stairs two at a time. 

When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he peers down the hallway at Nursey, kneeling on the floor with a dustpan, and Miley sitting on the countertop with her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. On the floor are shards of clear glass, radiating outwards from the sink.

“Liam!” Miley calls. “Nursey doesn’t know how to wash dishes without a dishwasher.”

Nusey looks up, makes a face, and says, “I know how to do dishes! You water them, you soap them, you water them again.”

“No, you really don’t,” Miley says with a shake of her head. “You washed them in cold water. I told you to turn on the hot water and you dropped the glass when it got too hot.”

“How was I supposed to know it would get hot?” Nursey protests.

Dex makes to enter the kitchen, but Nursey says, “Stop. Wait until I get the glass cleaned up.”

So Dex stops at the end of the hallway. It’s strange, to see Nursey in his kitchen laughing with his little sister. It does something to him, but not unpleasant. It’s nice, Dex thinks.

He shakes the thought out of his head and watches Nursey sweep the last few shards of glass into the dustpan.

When Nursey deems the kitchen safe, he goes to put the broom and dustpan back into the pantry while Dex rummages through the cabinets to look for something to eat. He settles on shoving dry handfuls of Corn Pops into his mouth.

“Gross,” Miley says, hopping off the counter. 

Dex sticks his tongue out at her, covered in half-chewed bits of cereal. She rolls her eyes, but reaches her hand into the box to take a handful for herself. They chew in silence for a while, leaning against the cabinets.

Neither of the Poindexter kids have any biological siblings (that they know of). Miley entered the foster system as a baby, so her knowledge of her biological family is mostly non-existent. She could have siblings, Dex supposes, but none she’s ever known. And Dex, well, Dex counts his blessings that his birth parents hadn’t been stupid enough to have more kids. 

Dex doesn’t know what it’s like to have a sibling that’s blood related to you, one who you’ve known all your life or all of theirs. But, as far as Dex is concerned, Miley is his sister and has been since he was seven years old. They annoy each other and take care of each other, often in the same breath.

Dex knocks his shoulder against hers and says, “Missed you, Miley Moo.”

She makes a face at the nickname, but rests her head on his shoulder. “Missed you, too, even if you chew with your mouth open.”

They spend the rest of the day doing nothing the way you’re supposed to over break. The three of them pile on the couch and watch a marathon of some TV show Miley likes about thieves using their skills for good that isn’t half bad. Miley sits on one end, her elbow resting on the wooden armrest and chin in her hand. Dex sits next to her, squashed in the middle, until Nursey takes pity on him and puts his arm on the back of the couch to give Dex an extra inch or two.

Leona Poindexter finds them like that, four hours later, passed out as Christmas commercial about cars plays on the TV.

She takes a picture with her phone.

\---

It takes Nursey three days to absolutely fall in love with Dex’s mom. Dex knows this because, while listening to her recount the story of the time Uncle Donall got stuck in a lobster trap, Nursey tells him.

“Dude, I love your mom,” he says, leaning across the table to stage whisper to Dex.

They are sitting around, waiting for canned cinnamon rolls to finish baking. Miley is holding the little cup of icing, sticking her pinky into it when she thinks no one is looking. Dex is tinkering with their coffee pot. It’s decided to only brew right sometimes and, right now, it has decided that no one in the Poindexter household deserves coffee.

“Duh,” Miley says, licking the icing off her finger. “Mom is hashtag awesome.”

Dex groans. Miley has been spending entirely too much time around Nurse. She finds him hilarious, which is equal parts awesome and terrible. Awesome because his sister approves of the boy he likes (not that it matters because Nursey most certainly doesn’t like Dex back) and terrible because now she uses his stupid verbalization of hashtag thing.

Mom smiles and says, “That’s sweet, Derek. I’m glad you’re comfortable here.”

“Thanks, Miss Poindexter,” Nursey says, grinning.

Mom waves her hand dismissively and says, “I’ve already told you, Leona is fine. Now, do you want to hear about the time Liam fell through the ice when I took him ice fishing?”

Nursey says yes at the same time Dex vehemently says no.

Mom looks over at Dex, to make sure he really doesn’t mind her telling the story, before launching into one of the most embarrassing days of Dex’s life.

Dex tunes the story out. He doesn’t need to hear it again. He was there. It was embarrassing enough the first time around. Instead, he watches his mom and Nursey talk. Mom talks with her hands and Nursey subconsciously leans closer to whoever he’s talking to. 

The thing is, Dex’s mom is pretty awesome. When she was seventeen, her parents kicked her out of the house for being a lesbian. She spent a few months wondering, trying to figure out her life, when she reconnected with an old foster brother and moved to Winter Harbor. She worked a summer on Donall’s boat before enlisting in tech courses at the nearest community college. Now, she’s the primary handy-women of Winter Harbor and, seasonally, the night manager of Edna’s Bed and Breakfast.

When Dex first arrived in Winter Harbor, he had been wary of the woman who would become his mother. He entered a home where an adult called Miley the right pronouns and did her hair up nice and girly like she liked it. The fridge and cabinets were always open. In fact, nothing in the house was out of bounds. He could even use Leona’s power tools, if he asked permission and demonstrated that he knew how to use them. Dex didn’t, of course, but it was the principal of the matter. It was strange and Dex didn’t trust it. 

He supposed he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for shit to hit the fan, for this to blow up in his face. It never really did. Dex never got told hr ate too much. Miley never got misgendered by anyone in the house. Leona even offered to get Dex new hockey equipment, if he wanted to try playing again.

It took years, but eventually Dex stopped waiting for things to go wrong at home. 

Surprisingly, watching his mother talk with Nursey, does nothing to change that. 

Dex wonders when he stopped waiting for things to go wrong between them again. Like, sure, he’d been afraid to ask Nursey to come back to Winter Harbor for break but Dex hadn’t been afraid of that ruining their friendship. At worst, it would have just made things awkward for a day or two before they started chirping each other over text.

As his mom tells Nursey about fishing Dex out of the ice by the hood of his jacket, Dex finds himself thinking that Nursey’s friendship is the third thing Dex has ever been sure of in his life.

\---

The first was Miley. Dex, age seven and a half, took one look at that screaming toddler with buzzed hair and a headless Barbie in her hand and thought, ‘Yup, that’s my sister.’

The second was Mom. This one took longer, almost two years. Fall of his senior year of high school, Dex got suspended. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time in over a year and Dex was worried. Leona had asked if he wanted to be adopted over the summer and Dex had said no. He figured that this would be the excuse she needed to send him packing. 

The car ride home had been a silent affair. When they pulled into the driveway, Dex began drafting a goodbye to Miley in his head.

“Did you have good reason for what you did?” she asked, hands still on the steering wheel.

Dex nodded, tersely. The boy had called Miley a “he-she.”

Leona nodded back. “Okay then.”

She turned the car off, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and opened the driver’s side door.

Dex was flabbergasted. His first suspension under the Poindexter roof had lost him a week of hockey practice, not to mention extra chores on Donall’s boat. The second one had lead to the biggest fight he and Leona had ever had. The third, however, seemed to be leading to nothing.

“You getting out of the car, Liam?” she asked, after a few moments of Dex staring at her and blinking in disbelief.

Dex looked at her, eyes wide, and asked, “Aren’t I in trouble?”

Leona closed her door and resettled herself into the car seat. She seemed thoughtful for a moment.

“When I first met you,” she began, “I thought maybe we’d found the wrong Liam. The four years I’d known Miley, it was ‘my brother Liam’ this and ‘my brother Liam’ that. She talked about you so much it felt like I knew you.”

Dex sunk lower into his seat, eyes burning. Leona might not be his mom, but he’d at least thought she’d liked him.

“Let me finish, kiddo. When you rolled up here, black eye and busted mouth, I thought this was going to be a world of hurt for Miley. Then, you got in trouble at school for fighting your first week. I was pissed, you remember? Then you did it again, two week later. I was so fucking pissed. Here was this kid who I’d been searching for for over four years and this is what he does? When we got home, we fought about it. Remember?”

Dex swallowed. He remembered. They’d yelled at each other for over an hour before Dex had snapped and screamed, “So I’m just supposed to let everyone call me fag and beat the shit out of me again?”

Leona shook her head and said, “It was not my finest parenting moment. I hadn’t even considered that you hadn’t started it. You had every right to be mad at me for that one.”

Dex looked over at her, sheepishly, and muttered, “I was.”

“I know, kiddo,” Leona said. “You were pissed and I realized that I knew you only from Miley’s stories. She told me about a brave boy who bought her tiaras and stood up to bullies in your foster home. I never thought about what that would look like to an adult. To a kid, you’re a hero for standing up for yourself. To an adult, you’re a delinquent at the mercy of small town Maine’s zero tolerance policy.”

Dex looked over at her. “So you’re not gonna kick me out?”

Leona looked stricken and said, “No! I’m going to teach you how to fix the washer.”

Dex laughed, “What?”

“The washer, Liam. It’s not spinning again.”

“But why are you teaching me to fix the washer?” he asked.

Leona smiled softly and said, “Because you can’t change how people are gonna think about you by yelling and throwing bad punches. I know it might make you feel a little better in the short run, but it’s not going to fix things. Fixing and changing people’s opinions about you is hard. Fixing a washer is hard, too, but once you understand how it works it gets a little easier.”

They walked into the house and fixed the washer. And, somehow, in between getting grease all over his second favorite flannel and flooding the basement floor (twice), Dex begins to feel a little better. 

\---

The Poindexters are not religious, not at all. Hell, Dex has never even been to church. They do not celebrate Easter or any other Christian holidays. They’re also iffy on Thanksgiving, Labor Day, and Columbus Day for obvious reasons (those reasons are: genocide, capitalism, and genocide). However, they do kind of do Christmas.

“Kind of?” Nursey asks, the morning of December the 24th, licking cookie dough off the back of a spoon. 

“Kind of,” confirms Dex, trying to add another drop of blue food coloring to get the purple cookie dough looking less red. It isn’t working. This happens every year.

Miley chimes in, “See, Mom was raised, like, Catholic or something…”

“Mormon,” Mom corrects, cutting parchment paper to fit the baking trays.

“Mormon,” Miley amends, before continuing. “Anyway, organized religion and her don’t get along very well. So we have our own kind of Christmas-ish thing on the 24th. It’s mostly making cookies, giving each other one gift, and then watching Harry Potter.”

Dex adds another few drops of blue, vigorously stirs the cookie dough, and sighs in defeat. The rainbow cookies are just going to have to be composed of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and red-purple.

Nursey asks, “Which Harry Potter movie?”

“We play War to decide who gets to pick,” Dex says, dumping his cookie dough out of the bowl and onto a piece of plastic wrap. “We all have our favorites. Mom likes the first two best. Miley is obsessed with the third one--I think she likes everyone’s hair in that one--and the Order of the Phoenix because of Tonks. I like the sixth one best.”

Nursey nods and says, “I like the second part of the last one. The Irish kid who wants to explode the bride cracks me up.”

Miley makes a face. “Too sad. Fred’s death is still too much for me. It makes me cry and you wouldn’t want to make me cry on Christmas, would you?”

“Would never dream of it, Poindexter Junior,” Nursey says. “Besides, I’m terrible at cards. You’d probably beat me anyway.”

“War is mostly luck,” she replies, shaping each individual color of cookie dough into a log before placing them to rest in the fridge.

Nursey raises his right arm and says, “Not very lucky, either.”

Miley makes a face. It’s the same face she makes when they're watching that stupid TV show about werewolves she likes and one of them does something stupid. It’s also the same face she makes when Dex says something to put himself down.

Mom beats her to saying anything.

“It’s never too late for your luck to change, Derek,” she says, adding, “if you’re inclined to believe in luck. I don’t put much stock in it, personally. Luck feels a little too much like letting the universe make decisions for you.”

There’s a moment of silence. Dex doesn’t like it. All of the cookie dough is done, resting in the fridge, and there’s nothing left to busy his hands with. Dex has always done best when his hands are busy. There’s a saying about idle hands. One of his foster dads used to yell it at him whenever Dex sat down for longer than a minute. 

Dex shakes his head.

“You don’t gotta play if you don’t want to,” he says to Nurse. A year ago, it would have been said with annoyance. Today, it is said with a slight shrug.

“I’ll play,” Nursey says. “I’ve got to get the whole Poindexter holiday experience, card games and rainbow cookies included.”

Miley sets the mixing bowl into the sink and starts filling it with water. The Poindexters do not have a dishwasher. Their kitchen is small enough and cabinet space is precious. Also, their house is old and doesn’t have the right hookup for one. Mom could probably put it in, but then there’s the cost of the actual dishwasher to consider. 

“They’re holi-gay cookies,” Miley corrects, taking the spoon out of Nursey’s hand and dropping it into the sink.

Nursey shoots Dex a look, as if to ask  _ Is she serious? _ , before laughing. It’s the kind of laugh Dex is used to hearing for Nursey. It’s loud and contagious and sort of wonderful. It is the kind of laugh that, over the summer, Dex would have given anything to hear. 

Mom finishes cutting the last of the parchment paper and goes to join Nursey at the table. 

“I started making them with my brother, Donall, after I moved here,” she begins. “They were our joke, because neither of us felt much in the holiday mood. When Miley got here, I made them without thinking. She loved them, so I kept making them. Liam made fun of them at first, because he said they’re too much work, but he helped me roll them out and punch out little animal shapes with the cutters for hours. They’re kind of our thing.”

Nursey stops laughing, a smile still on his lips, and says, “That’s awesome, Miss P., I really mean it. Little animal shapes? What do those look like?”

Dex sighs, but walks over to the cabinet. It takes him a moment to locate the little basket with all their cookie cutters in them, but he eventually finds them behind the blender.

He walks over to the table and slides the basket over to Nurse.

Dex gave most of the cookie cutters to Mom their first Christmas all together. He had found them over the summer in the little antique store down by the ice cream place. They’re all about an inch long, made out of metal, and shaped like a weird assortment of animals. 

Nursey holds one up in front of his face and raises an eyebrow. “Is this a hippo?”

“Yup,” Dex says, rifling through the basket. “There’s a moose, too.”

Nurse grins.

They spend about five minutes looking at all the cookie cutters and picking out their favorites. Miley is partial to the platypus one. Mom likes the donkey (even though Dex is pretty sure it’s supposed to be a horse). Dex likes the duck, because it looks like a rubber duck and all the rest of them look like real animals. And Nursey finds a cat one and exclaims, “It’s a Zamboni cookie!”

Zamboni, the cat in question, raises her head from her paws at the mention of her name. She’s laying on the back of the couch and has been since leaving the foot of Dex’s bed when he got up hours ago. It took a few days, but she warmed up to the Poindexter house. For some reason, it makes Dex feel all fluttery and stupidly happy.

Miley looks over at the cat, at the cookie cutter, and over to Nursey.

“Can we take her on a walk outside? It’s warm enough today, right?” she asks.

She’s been asking since the second day of their break, when Nursey mentioned that she’s harness trained. However, it’s been a bitterly cold December in Winter Harbor. It’s stayed in the low teens most days, keeping the Poindexters and their guest inside. Today, however, it’s in the thirties and sunny. There’s still snow on the ground, but that’s probably not a problem for a fluff-ball like Zamboni.

Nursey sets the cookie cutter down on the table, gently. He looks over to where Dex’s mom is sitting, reading the local newspaper.

Mom looks up and says, “You guys go and have fun with the cat. The cookie dough needs to chill for at least another two hours before we can roll it out.”

It seems like Nursey had been waiting for her approval, because he looks over at Dex and says, “Want to take my cat for a walk?”

Something about the absurdity of the statement causes Dex to start laughing. Here’s Derek Nurse, in his house, looking at tiny cookie cutters and asking if Dex wants to take his big, fluffy-ass act on a walk. It’s just too weird. But, honestly, it’s what Dex’s life has become since he decided to drive to New York City to prove he wasn’t a shitty friend.

Dex can’t say he regrets it.

They bundle up. Dex puts on his jacket, shoves a hat over his hair (which is, admittedly, getting too long and starting to curly at the nape of his neck), and stamps his feet into his boots. Nursey takes longer to get ready, on account of having to get Zamboni into her harness.

Miley bounds across the living room, puffy purple coat unzipped, with her little instant camera clutched in her hands. Dex had given it to her for her last birthday and she treated the film like it was gold.

“Smile!” she hollers, holding the camera in front of her face. “Liam! Derek! Squish together so I can get a picture.”

They squish, because telling Miley no is something Dex has never been good at and Nursey is becoming bad at. Dex presses his shoulder into Nursey’s and Nursey shifts Zamboni in his arms so that she’s more towards the center of the frame. Dex feels himself grow warm and he knows it’s not just the fact that he’s wearing his coat inside.

Miley presses the button, the flash goes off, and she flashes her best self-satisfied grin at them.

_ That little shit _ , Dex thinks, because of course she took the picture because she wanted to get him to stand closer to Nursey. She was getting way to invested in his crush. 

She sets the little picture upside down on the kitchen counter and heads out the back door.

Nurse just shakes his head and follows, leaving Dex fumbling for the door knob. Before he manages to shut it, he can hear his mother laugh quietly to herself from the kitchen table.

It’s bright outside like it only gets on sunny winter days when there’s snow on the ground. Nursey sets down Zamboni, who sniffs half-heartedly at a small bush, before starting to saunter lazily through the three inches of snow coating the backyard. Miley walks over and asks Nursey if she can hold the leash. She has her hands clasped behind her back, fiddling nervously. 

Nursey hands her the leash and gives her a rundown of taking a cat for a walk, about how they just like to wander around.

“She’ll walk you,” he tells her. “You just get to follow along for the ride.”

Miley smiles at him, big and toothy like she only does around family because she thinks her braces make her look stupid.

Dex turns away. The sunlight is almost blinding.

Miley and Zamboni circle the yard, slowly, stopping to admire the mostly broken fence and the doorless toolshed in the corner. 

Nursey makes his way over to the deck, next to Dex, and sits down on a snowy step. He looks up, expectantly, and brushes away the snow from the other half of the step. Dex sits down because, well, he’s sort of hopeless around Nursey these days.

They sit quietly for a few minutes, the only sounds their mismatched breaths and Miley laughing a few yards away, with their shoulders nearly touching. Dex realizes this is the first time they’ve really been alone since the train ride. Dex’s loft bedroom offers no privacy, the railing opening up to the living room and the kitchen right below their feet. They also sleep and wake at odd intervals. Dex tends to rise too early and Nursey stay up too late, drinking tea in the kitchen. 

Nurse breaks the silence.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

His words are soft. Dex finds himself looking over at him, trying to figure out what Nursey is thinking (god, he never really knows, does he?). But Nursey is watching Zamboni poke her nose into a dead hydrangea, giving nothing away.

“No problem,” Dex says, because it isn’t. Nursey isn’t a problem. Dex’s feelings about him might be, but Derek Nurse himself isn’t. 

Nursey just nods and Dex thinks,  _ You don’t get it _ .

‘No problem’ is something people say automatically, on reflex, but Dex means it. Having Nurse here, at home, thinking his mom is cool and finding his sister endearing instead of annoying, is the opposite of a problem. It’s probably one of the nicest feelings Dex has ever had and he thinks, maybe, Nursey deserves to know that.

“I really mean it,” Dex starts, unsure of his words. “You’re not a problem here. I--uh, I mean we--like having you.” 

Nursey shoots him a dubious look.

Dex continues, “It’s usually really quiet here in winter--it’s not tourist season--so having you around is nice. Mom spends a lot of time just waiting for someone’s water heater or whatever to break so she can fix it and Miley’s usually bored to tears without her online classes, not that she’d ever admit to liking school. I know we’re not, like, super interesting or anything. If you’d gone to Chowder’s he’d probably take you surfing or something, but there’s really not a lot to do here in winter. But it’s nice to have another person around.”

Nursey looks back out into the yard. Miley has slipped in the snow and Zamboni is meowing at her in what Dex can only assume is concern or confusion. There is a smile on Nursey’s face as he watches them.

“I think I like being around,” Nursey admits. “I didn’t really know what your family was like. I mean, I’d sort of met Miley before, but I didn’t even really know you until this year. They’re--I don’t know Dex--they’re different.”

Dex starts to protest, but Nursey cuts him off.

“Different in a good way, Poindexter,” he clarifies. “Like, I love my sister. Farrah’s cool and all, but we’re not close like you and Miley. And they way you talk to your mom? I don’t think I’ve ever talked to my parents about how I’m feeling or what’s going on in my life other than, like, my classes and grades and shit. I’ve said more to your mom in five days than I’ve said to mine in, like, three years.”

Dex says, “Sorry,” because what else do you say to that?

He’d know, Dex supposes, that Nursey and his parents don’t really talk. He’s never seen them at parents weekend, never heard him call them or skype them from their dorm room. It’s different from his own family, with Miley’s constant texts and Mom’s standing Sunday evening skype calls.

Nursey just shrugs and says, “It is what it is. My parents aren’t, like, shitty people or anything. They just like their jobs more than they like their adult children.”

Dex makes a face. Five years ago, when he was fifteen, he thought turning eighteen would flip some magical switch in his life. Eighteen would be the end of foster parents and social workers and, finally, Dex would be an adult. He’d been counting down the days since his fourth foster home.

Except, at twenty, Dex knows he wouldn’t have made it on his own. The system would have kicked him out at eighteen, with no job or housing, and the real world would have eaten him alive. Dex doesn’t like to think about what would have happened.

“What I’m saying is,” Nursey continues, looking at Dex like what he’s about to say is important, “your family is, like, unreal. You know, for me. You guys really love each other, like, a lot. I think I could drown in it.”

Dex didn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. Instead, he presses his shoulder into Nursey’s and looks out at the back yard.

Miley is still following behind Zamboni, camera in hand, at the edge of the yard. She’s laughing. Dex can’t hear it, but her mouth is open and her shoulders are shaking and she looks happy. Zamboni is pawing curiously at the stalk of a frozen cattail, right at the edge of the puddle sized body of water Mom calls a pond.

Nursey presses back.

\---

When Dex had been little, before his biological mom died, he’d been friends with this girl named Willow. When they were in preschool, they’d had a sleepover at Dex’s house. It was the first--and the last--time anyone had visited.

It had started out good enough. Dex and Willow had sleeping bags set up in the living room, a bowl of slightly burnt popcorn, and a rented VHS of the Care Bear movie ready to go. Dex’s mother was sitting on the couch behind them, head in her hand.

Dex honestly doesn’t remember much about his biological mother. She’d died less than a year after his ill-fated sleep over. She had red hair, like Dex’s, but much darker. It was always long, slightly curly, and usually hanging limp around her shoulders. She’d worked as a cashier at some grocery store or something like that. Dex couldn’t really recall the details, but they used to pick up a snack at the store after school.

“I like the Care Bear Cousins better,” Willow said, sucking her thumb. Willow was a year younger than Dex and the other kids in preschool called her a baby because she still cried for her mommy every morning and sucked her thumb during nap time.

Dex didn’t think she was a baby, though. Dex thought she was the coolest kid he’d ever met. She liked to be called Will, not Willow, and she throught Dex’s Care Bear lunch box was the best thing she’d ever seen. They were also cubby neighbors--William and Willow--and seat buddies during carpet time.

“You just like the rabbit,” Dex said. “He’s like Marshmallow.”

Marshmallow was their class pet, a lazy white rabbit that slept most of the day.

“No!” shouted Willow. “I like the cat, too!”

They giggled and went back to watching their movie, fingers covered in butter from the popcorn.

It was a good movie, too, Dex remembered thinking as the Care Bears went to face off with Dark Heart at the summer camp. It was a good movie and a good day.

They never got to finish the movie. He would never know if Tenderheart and his friends defeated Dark Heart with the power of love. 

The front screen door slammed shut. His father was home.

\---

A few days after Christmas, Dex wakes up from a dream that is probably more memory than dream. 

While stretching his arms above his head, Dex’s right shoulder makes an audible  _ pop _ . It’s been doing that for the past ten years, ever since he broke his collarbone. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s one of the many reminders that he wasn’t always Liam Poindexter that he can’t seem to shake, especially not after that dream.

Dex tires his best not to dwell on things, he really does. He knows that, when he starts picking apart his life as William Lynch, it’s hard to stop. Isn’t that what wounds are always like when they’re healing? The scabs get all itchy and scratching them just makes them bleed again and scar later.

So, yeah, Dex tries not to think about it too much. Unfortunately, his subconscious apparently hasn’t gotten the memo. 

He wonders what ever happened to Willow.

After that night, pulling Willow into the hall closet to hide from whatever tirade his father had been about to lay down, the Lynch family had booked it out of Ellsworth. They’d moved a lot, before. Dex had lived up and down the coast of Maine, fleeing well-meaning neighbors and following fishing jobs.

There is a creak at the top of the stairs and Nursey’s head peeks around the doorless entryway to the loft. 

“Dude, you’re up!” he says, smiling wide.

He hops up the last couple of stairs and catapults himself onto the futon. The futon wobbles slightly, but holds.

Dex shakes he head, as if he can erase his thoughts like you can erase an Etch-a-Sketch. He looks at Nursey, dressed in the same gray sweatpants as the night before but a different hoodie, and makes himself think about something else.

Dex asks, “Where have you been?”

“Hanging with the smaller Poindexter,” he says, letting his head fall on the edge of Dex’s bed. “She’s trying to convince Zams to shake paws for treats. She hilariously stubborn.”

Dex raises an eyebrow. “She’s not, like, torturing the cat or anything, is she?”

Nursey laughs, “Nah, she’s just holding cat treats above Zamboni’s head and asking for her paw over and over again.”

“If you’re sure,” Dex says, unsure. He’s never had a pet before. 

“Che’yah!” exclaims Nurse. “Poindexter Junior is just very determined to make Zams love her in the most. I think she made them matching friendship bracelets.”

“Technically, Miley was a Poindexter before me so I think that makes her Poindexter Senior,” Dex says, shaking his head. “Also, how is she making a friendship bracelet for a cat? Cats don’t wear bracelets.”

Nurse rolls his eyes. “Bracelet for her, collar for Zams. Also, didn’t know that.”

“That cats don’t wear bracelets?” Dex asks, half-joking.

“The adoption thing, asshat,” he clarifies. “I thought you guys were, like, adopted together or something.”

Dex shakes his head and says, “Nah, I wasn’t adopted until, like, two months before I turned eighteen. Miley was adopted right after I came to Winter Harbor, so almost three years before me. She was, like, eight? Might have been nine by then.”

“Why’d it take so long for you to be adopted?” Nursey asks, propping himself up on his elbow and looking up at Dex. 

Dex hesitates. They’re sitting close. Nursey’s forearm is, like, three inches, at most, from Dex’s right thigh. When they talk about things like this--secrets, or whatever you want to call them--they’re usually further apart and it’s usually at night. Dex is better at talking about himself when people can’t look at him. 

But this is Nursey, in his bedroom, sitting inches away and asking a question that Dex deems ‘sad, but not Tragic Backstory Level 7™ sad.’

So, he tells him.

“I told Mom no,” he admits.

Nursey raises an eyebrow, opens his mouth to say something, but quickly closes it and tries to school his expression into a more neutral one.

Dex laughs, “Yeah, I know, kind of stupid. Like what kind of idiot turns away a home?”

“Nah, you’re not an idiot,” Nursey says softly. “You’re just kind of crazy about your family. I can’t imagine you saying no to them.”

“I wasn’t me, though,” Dex says, looking up at the steepled ceiling. “I wasn’t Dex yet.

Nursey makes a slight sound of disapproval, but Dex just keeps talking.

“Nursey, I mean it. You think I was bad on the Taddy Tour? Beginning of freshman year? I was so much worse at fifteen. I was an asshole to everyone except for Miley. I said shit just to piss people off, not because I believed it, because it was easier to make people hate me than deal with whatever mess making connections would cause. I was a fucking mess. I got kicked off of two hockey teams in six months.”

There’s a moment of silence after Dex finishes. He has never talked about this to anyone except for his therapist. It had been easy to say, surprisingly easy to say. Something about being around Nursey these days makes him want to spill his guts. The silence after is much harder than any of the actual telling.

“I was in in-patient care,” Nurse says, eventually, his voice almost scarily devoid of any intonation. 

Dex looks down, away from the cracks in the plaster and the stains from where the roof leaks. 

“This summer, like a week after we got back from Samwell? I had a manic episode or whatever and walked straight into traffic. I’d been up for, like, four days at that point? I was running late to this internship thing I was supposed to do over the summer, with a local ‘zine, and I knew that if i didn’t start cutting across the street I’d miss the big team meeting I was supposed to be going to. So, I just walked the wrong way down Lexington Avenue for, like, five blocks. Cars were beeping, bike messengers were going around me, but I just kept walking. Eventually, some cab hit me--stop with that face, it was just a tap and I was walking in the street--and someone called 911. 

“Apparently I was in the hospital for like three days, but I don’t really remember the first day or so. They’d--the hospital staff or EMT who pried my ass off a taxi or the cops--called Farrah during an audition. They couldn’t reach my parents. I got out, Farrah picked me up, and when we got home and I charged my phone, you’d texted about the Falcs game.”

Nursey sits up abruptly, folding himself into an upright position. He looks at Dex, furrows his eyebrows, and nods once.

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, Dex says, “Nurse--”

“I’m not saying this to, like, undermine what you just told me,” Nursey says, hurriedly, cutting him off. “Like, you know I like learning things about you even if they’re not like quote-unquote good things as defined by society. I just wanted to say that, like, I know what it’s like to be a mess. You don’t have to, like, tell me more about your shit if you don’t want to. But, you totally can. If you want.”

Dex doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know. His brain keeps flashing back to Farrah’s phone call and  _ worried worried _ . If being hospitalized doesn’t count as worried worried, Dex doesn’t want to think about what might. 

And Dex still doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing, just reaches for Nursey’s hand.

Nursey meets him halfway.

When doesn’t he?

They sit there for a minute or two, two grown men holding hands on two beds so close together they might as well be one, in a small red house in northern Maine that was mostly held together by sheer stubbornness.

“I think I was scared,” Dex admits. 

Nursey asks, “Of what?”

“Being adopted. I was so afraid of wanting something I told myself I couldn’t have it until it was almost too late.”

Dex had been afraid for as long as he could remember. He’d been afraid of his father, of raised voices and slamming doors. He’d been afraid of his biological mother the last time he’d seen her alive, her hands wrapped around his arm, begging him to go for a drive that ended up with her car ten feet under water. He’d been afraid of his foster parents--the first set who took Miley away and the subsequent ones that locked the fridge and the cabinets and pawned his hockey stuff--and of social workers and classmates and boys who would kiss him one day and knock out his teeth the next.

He’s even afraid now, his fingers laced with Nursey’s.

He has always been afraid and that fear has made him angry.

A tightness forms in his throat, a little like the feeling when you know a cough is coming. It spreads through his mouth and up his nose, gathering behind his eyes. For the first time in five, ten, maybe fifteen year, Dex begins to cry.

He pulls his knees up, but keeps his grasp on Nursey’s hand. He bows forward, resting his forehead on his knees. The motion must pull at Nursey through the tether of their hands because Nursey suddenly has his free arm wrapped around Dex’s shoulders.

“But it wasn’t too late,” Nursey murmurs practically in Dex’s ear. “It wasn’t.” 

\---

A day later, on the train back to New York City to drop Zamboni off at Nursey’s empty apartment, Dex makes himself a promise.

He looks over at Nursey, who’s frantically tapping out something on his phone. He has his tongue pressed between his teeth, concentrating on the screen before him. Dex thinks he looks stupidly endearing

Dex decides right there. He’s done being afraid.


	4. little boats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/185571731@N05/49099904412/in/photostream/)

It’s spring, but Derek finds himself feeling colder than ever. He shoves his hands under his armpits and tries to focus on what Bitty is saying.

They’re in the Frozen Four. It’s not the first time Samwell has been there. It is not even the first time Derek has been there, but something about it feels different. Derek knows they can all feel it. He can tell by the way Chowder keeps chewing on the velcro of his gloves, how Hops keeps rewrapping his stick even though he’s wrapped it twice since they entered the locker room forty minutes ago. They’re all on edge, but none more so than Dex.

Derek doesn’t really know why and when he’d tried to ask two days ago on their flight to Denver, Dex had refused to answer. And Derek, he’s trying to respect that and not push, but when Dex is anxious he’s nearly impossible to be around. He still tries, though, because Dex keeps checking to make sure Derek is within arms reach every three minutes and Derek doesn’t know what else to do but keep himself in the blast zone.

“One game at a time,” Bitty says, not for the first time since the tournament started. “We just have to take it one period at a time, one play at a time, one pass at a time. We can do this. We’ve never played better, especially not since Nursey got back on the ice with us.”

There is a cheer at that. Bully makes a loud  _ whoop _ and throws an arm over Tango’s shoulder. Chowder stops chewing his gloves long enough to smile. Some of the tension from Dex’s shoulders even lessens.

_ Maybe it is just nerves _ , Derek thinks. 

He hopes. 

He might even pray.

Because this is Dex who’s nervous around people all the time, but never about hockey. This is Dex, who is often only sure of his ability to keep the offense at bay and not much else. So, yeah, Derek doesn’t think it’s just nerves, but god does he wish it was.

“One more game,” Bitty repeats, smiling broadly, knocking Derek back to reality where they’re one game away from the NCAA Hockey Finals.

The rest of the team parrots, “One more game!”

Even Dex says it, his voice soft and a little too close to Derek. There’s not a lot of enthusiasm in the voice, more resignation, but it’s more than Dex has said in the locker room since they left Faber. 

Hell, maybe even before that.

The team breaks out from their little huddle, returning to their spots along the edge of the locker room to grab their helmets and sticks and head for the locker room door.

On the way out, Dex bumps his shoulder against Derek’s. 

Derek feels something loosen in his chest, a worry he didn’t even know he’d had dissipated.

He knocks back and says, “Let’s light it up!”

Dex laughs, still tense but more relaxed than Derek has seen him in days, and says, “Fuck yeah!” 

\---

They sweep the floor with Denver. It’s strange, how easy it almost is.

In the locker room, there is screaming and shouting and Bitty blasting Beyonce from his phone. Derek gets wrapped up in it. He always does. Other people’s joy is almost infectious and, despite his trepidation before the game, he finds himself half singing and half screaming along to  _ Crazy in Love _ .

Chowder is laughing, his hair damp from sweat, and dancing like a rejected muppet. Hops and Lewis are doing something at looks vaguely like the funky chicken, but Lewis keeps insisting it is the newest Swedish dance craze. Even Whiskey looks happy, proudly taping and labeling the puck from his second goal of the game.

“Got me looking so crazy right now,” Derek sings while Ollie attempts the backup vocals. 

Bitty chimes in, “Ya love’s got me looking so crazy right now.”

“Ya love,” crones Wicks, or maybe Ollie, Derek can’t tell.

They’re screaming and dancing and everyone is fucking jazzed because they’re going to the finals. Duluth won’t know what hit them.

Derek turns to share that thought with Dex, who had been sitting on the bench next to him before the singing and screaming had started and notices he’s not there. He does a quick scan of the locker room, but he doesn’t see Dex’s signature red hair among the throng of people celebrating a kick ass win.

He feels his stomach bottom out. Dex had been acting so weird in the hours leading up to the game, even weirder than he’d been since the regional finals finished up last week.

Derek approaches Coach Hall, who is standing at the front of the locker room with a tense smile on his face. He’s pleased they won, Derek knows this, but the noise of his hockey team attempting to be Beyonce is obviously too much for him.

“Coach,” Derek says. Well, more like yells. It is, admittedly, a little loud.

  
Coach Hall turns to him and says, “Nurse, what do you need?”

“You seen Poindexter?” he asks, trying to seem casual and not at all concerned. Bros don’t get concerned when they don’t see their bros for, like, four minutes. But, outside of class, Derek doesn’t think Dex has been further than eight feet from him since the regionals.

Admittedly, he’s probably overreacting. 

Probably.

“He went out into the tunnel a minute or two ago,” Coach hall says, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the door. “He said he felt dizzy and needed some air.”

Derek nods. “Thanks, Coach!”

He’s still wearing his pads and stupid hockey socks, but Derek doesn’t care. Hockey players celebrate their wins with their team, even when they’re sick. Ransom once had the stomach flu for a game against Harvard and he still managed to cuss them out in between hugging a garbage can between his knees. Something wasn’t right, but Derek didn’t know what.

He’s brain starts working overdrive, like it does sometimes, imagining what could be wrong with Dex. What if he’s got, like, the real flu. Like, actual influenza that knocks you on your ass for weeks. That would suck, because then Derek would have to play the finals with Bully who, well a good D-Man, isn’t Dex.

Derek shoulders the door open and looks to his left, towards the rink. Dex isn’t that way. He looks the other way and, about eight feet down the tunnel under the bleachers, Derek spots him. Dex is wearing a t-shirt, but he’s still wearing his bulky hockey pants. He’s barefoot and crouched down, his head almost between his knees.

It reminds him of another scene. Dex, in the doorway of his parents’ apartment, shitty bodega coffee in his hand. They way he’d said,  _ They used to lock the cabinets. _

Derek rushes over to him.

“Dex,” he says, softly.

There is no answer, so he says again, more urgently, “Dex!”

Dex still shows no signs of being aware that another person is standing in the tunnel with him. He just rocks forward and back on the balls of his feet. Derek thinks he hears a humming sound coming from his direction, but he isn’t sure.

And Derek, he knows what this is. This is a panic attack. He had them, before, when he’d thirteen and left alone at Bellevue for almost a month while the doctor’s tried to figure out what combination of drugs would allow him to function. That hadn’t been the scary part, not really. The scary, panic inducing part was his parents didn’t show up for two weeks and, when they did, it was to tell him they’d be sending him away to Andover in the fall.

Derek lowers himself to the floor. It’s slow work. Hockey pads are bulky and it is often hard enough to reach down to tie your skates, let alone sit on the floor next to your teammate who you may or may not be in love with who is having some sort of psychological breakdown.

“Liam,” Derek says softly, tentatively reaching out a hand. “I’m gonna touch you, if that’s okay.”

Dex nods furiously, but he doesn’t look up or say anything. Derek considers it a step in the right direction and throws his right arm across Dex’s shoulders. Dex stiffens a little at the contact, but doesn’t push away.

They sit there for a few moments, Derek taking slow deliberate breaths in hopes that Dex will start matching them.

Eventually, Derek gathers up the courage to ask, “You want to tell me what’s been going on?”

Dex makes a pathetic sound into his knees, a little like a sob, but says nothing.

Derek tries again. “You don’t have to, dude. I’m just saying that I know something's been up since regionals and it got a hell of a lot worse today. If you want to talk about it, you can. I’m right here and I’m sure as hell not going to judge.”

In a voice bearly audible, Dex mutters, “It’s stupid.”

Derek nearly lets out a sigh of relief. His boy isn’t catatonic, not now at least.

“I’ve been upset over stupider,” Derek says, going for light and reassuring, but coming off more desperate than anything else.

Dex scoffs, “I promised.”

“Promised what? To who?”

Dex finally raises his head. He isn’t crying, but his face looks puffy like maybe he had been just a few minutes ago. His hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat and there are bags under his eyes and Derek loves him. Simple as that. Derek loves him and, when you love people, you worry about them.

Dex says, “Myself. I promised myself I was done being afraid.”

Derek finds himself letting out a desperate laugh. 

“Everyone gets nervous before big games,” he says, feeling relieved. He knew how to deal with nerves and stage fright. It hit him everytime he had to do an in class critic for one of him poems or had a reading at one of Annie’s poetry nights.

Dex shakes his head, his eyes glued determinedly to the cinder block wall in front of him, and says, “I’m not afraid of hockey. Hockey’s easy. I know how to play hockey.”

Derek felt the dred creep back in, but he knew Dex was right. During their game against Denver, Dex was the most himself he’d been in over a week. It is only now, after playing, that he is like this again. Not that Derek knows what “this” is, just that he’s worried and Dex is hurting and he’d like to be able to help, if at all possible.

Dex opens his mouth to answer, but he doesn’t get the chance. 

“Hey, hey!” someone yells from the far end of the hall, towards the lobby area.

Derek turns to see who it is. 

It's one of the Duluth players, Derek can tell by the stupid maroon and gold jacket he’s wearing. He’s a white guy, with brown hair, and a Las Vegas Ace’s cap on his head. Derek bristles on instinct. Because, one, this is one of the players they’ll have to go up against in less than 48 hours and, two, fuck the Aces. It makes Derek distinctively dislike him.

“Hey, Lynch!” he calls. 

Dex goes pale, all the color draining from his face. 

He knows the guy, Derek realizes. Or knew him at some point, judging by the fact that he’s using a name Dex hasn’t used in almost four years. And Dex, he’s never really mentioned a lot of friends from his childhood. So, yeah, this guy probably isn’t good news.

“William fucking Lynch,” continues the Duluth player, either unaware or uncaring of Dex’s discomfort. “I thought that was you.”

No, Derek doesn’t dislike this guy. He fucking hates him.

Derek goes to stand, to say something to the guy, but Dex grabs his elbow in a vice like grip. He looks at Derek. His eyes are wide, animal staring into headlights wide, pleading and desperate. Derek doesn’t know what that look is supposed to mean, but he knows that Dex is scared shitless.

The Duluth player stops in front of them, giving Dex a huaty and self satisfied smirk. Dex immediiately drops his head and buries his face in his knees again. Derek has never seen him like that, cowed and without a retort. It’s jarring.

When Dex says nothing, the fucker keeps going, “Don’t remember seeing your name on the roster, though, you must be an alternate.”

Dex doesn’t even flinch. He’s perfectly still, Derek’s bicep still grasped in Dex’s hand like a life preserver. 

Derek does, though, flinch. The words are like a slap of cold wind to the face. Even when he and Dex had hated each other (or misunderstood each other to the point of hatred or whatever) there had been no denying that Dex was a fantastic hockey player. He might not be Jack or Whiskey, flashy and scoring game winning goals, but he was as solid of a D-Men as Derek had ever seen. Some dickwad insulting Poindexter’s hockey was just unfathomable. 

The Duluth player says, “Should have known you’d be on THAT team.” 

The way he says it makes Derek’s hands form into fists. Dex tightens his grip on Derek’s arm, but says nothing. He’s making the humming sound again, Derek can feel it reverberating through him. 

Derek knows microaggressions. You don’t get to be Muslim and living in New York City without becoming intamiatley familiar with the way people lean away from you on the subway. You don’t get to be a person of color playing hockey without learning the ins and outs of racially motivated dickery. 

“It’s captained by Jack Zimmermann’s little blond thing this season, right?” drones the Duluth player, ignoring the raising tension in the tunnel. “Blatant ass kissing from Samwell, but who the fuck cares? You guys will get what’s coming.”

Until now, Derek had kept his mouth shut for a number of reasons. First, he doesn’t know this asshole. He doesn’t know how Dex knows this asshole and he doesn’t want to overstep. He respects Dex’s personal life and shit. 

The second reason is that he’s the competition. Getting into a fight with a member of the opposing team two days before the NCAA finals would be monumentally stupid. Derek maybe impulsive sometimes, quick to judge, but he’s not going to risk his team’s chances at finally winning the Frozen Four if he can help it.

The third reason is kind of selfish. Derek doesn’t like to fight. He’s a pretty chill guy. Fighting is not usually something he condones. He can usually ignore trash talk like this. Hell, he usually uses trash talk like this to fuel his game and rub it in assholes like this dude’s faces when he wins.

But this fucker keeps saying shit about Dex and now he’s insulting Bitty and if there’s one thing Derek knows, it’s that any of the Frogs would gladly start a fight for Bitty.

“You didn’t see his name because you don’t know his name,” Derek says, standing up, breaking the hold Dex had on his arm. To be honest, it wasn’t much of a deterrent. Derek had mostly been staying on the floor for moral support, but now he thinks he’d be better off knocking some of this guys teeth out for moral support. 

The other guy laughs, “Yeah, I think I do. William Lynch, skinny fag on my Midget team back in the day. He had a rough game, got in a fight, and we never saw him again.”

Derek takes a steadying breath. He doesn’t know much about Dex’s pre-Poindexter life, mostly the Miley bits, but he knows his hockey playing was sporadic at best between the ages of seven and fourteen. He’d never thought about why, other than the constant changing of foster homes. Maybe assholes like this guy from Duluth were part of the reason, too.

“That’s Liam Poindexter,” Derek says firmly, his voice rising. “One of the best D-Men in all of the NCAA. He doesn’t do fights in games. He plays his game, does his job, and is at least half the reason Samwell’s in the finals in the first place.”

The dude shakes his head and says, “Whatever, just wanted to wish Lynch the Bitch good luck. He’s going to need it.”

He turns back the way he came and saunters away with his hands in his back pockets, like he didn’t care that he’d just picked at someone’s scabs until they started bleeding.

Maybe he didn’t.

God, Derek didn’t really want to live in a world where someone could be that big of a fucking douche cactus and not care.

Derek slides down the wall, feeling woozy. He doesn’t do confrontation well, he tends to shut down. He also might be just the tiniest bit protective of Dex. The dude can be delicate, fragile even. It’s not that Derek thinks he has to interfere and save Dex or anything, but if he can get assholes to leave him alone he’s going to do that.

They sit in silence for a beat. Dex has stopped making that heartbreaking keening sound. Derek, still light headed and woozy from the confrontation, tries to think of something to say to make everything go back to normal.

“Of course he was an Aces fan,” Derek jokes, the artificial lightness in his voice painful in his own ears.

Next to him, Dex lets out a retching sound and pukes all over both his own pants and Derek’s socks.

\---

Ford, carrying the team medical bag into their hotel room, says, “It’s either nerves or food poisoning. My bet is on nerves.”

She’s wearing her Samwell Men’s Hockey jacket, zipped up to her chin, and a pair of very comically large slippers with cat heads on the front. Any other time, Derek would have asked her where she’d gotten them. But this isn’t any other time. This is now, where is Dex laying on top of the sheets of his bed and shivering in his disheveled warm ups, and Derek still smells a little like vomit even after showering. 

Derek knows it’s not either. Dex hadn’t eaten anything at lunch, just peeled the wrapper of his straw into little tiny pieces, and he’d been fine during the game. But Derek keeps his mouth shut. 

After the whole puking thing, Derek had grabbed their coaches and Ford and let them know that Dex had gotten sick in the hall. He didn’t say anything about the other player because Derek had the feeling Dex wouldn’t want him to.

Ford had found rink staff to clean it up and Derek stayed with Dex in a nearby bathroom while the rest of the team finished changing and got on the bus. 

Dex had said nothing, then. He continued saying nothing when they entered the empty locker room and changed silently. He said nothing on the bus, head resting on the window. He feigned sleep, but Derek could see his open eyes reflected in the window as they past each streetlight. 

Now, in their hotel room, Dex is still silent. Ford holds a thermometer and shoves it under his tongue. The room is silent, waiting for the numbers to settle. It beeps. Ford yanks it out of Dex’s mouth.

“98.6 on the dot!” she cheers, triumphantly. She does a small dance in her ridiculous slippers, obviously pleased that Dex isn’t surfering from the flu. “You’ll be fine to play. Make sure he sleeps in, Nursey. Team breakfast is optional and your practice ice isn't until 3:00.”

Derek nods mutely as Ford exits their room, chattering about how she’s having a celebratory viewing of  _ Cats _ with Tango and Whiskey in their room if he wants to join them. Derek doesn’t. He doesn’t really want to do much of anything, except maybe sleep for three days or maybe take another shower, although both are unlikely to happen. 

After locking the door behind Ford, Dereks sits on the edge of his bed and glances over at Dex. Dex is on the opposing queen sized bed, curled up on top of the blankets facing the window. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest, Derek would be tempted to check for a pulse.

It’s an uncomfortable silence between them. It feels tangible and strange and like their freshmen all over again, when Derek would complain about the coffee during away games, like the coffee snob he was, and Dex would respond by pointing out that ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible, like the annoying asshole he was. 

_ Sometimes _ , Derek thinks,  _ I miss the way it used to be. _

It had been easier, sure, when Derek took every word out of Dex’s mouth as truth. From the bullshit about his political beliefs to his tirades about the uselessness of the study of literature at anything other than a surface letter, Derek had believed it.

But Dex didn’t believe any of those things. He just said shit. And, when he was uncomfortable, be said stupid shit. It led to fights, misunderstandings, and awkward silences not unlike this one. The latter had been easier to deal with before they were roommates, friends, and maybe more but who really knew right now?

“I’m sorry about your socks,” Dex says, in scratchy voice.

Derek revises his earlier thought. He doesn’t miss how things used to be. He likes how things are now. Well, not  _ now  _ now but before the tournament had begun, when they would sit together at Founders or at Annie’s or in the Poindexter kitchen and just be.

Derek, surprised to hear him speak after so long, stumbles over his words.

“It’s, uh, chill, I think I packed a second pair?” he says, even though he hadn’t. Those had been his lucky socks. He’d been wearing them for games since Juniors. They’d never been washed.

Dex lets out a breathy sound that might have been a laugh, “No, you didn’t.”

“No,” Derek admits. “I didn’t.”

The thing is now, after ten months of sharing secrets and living out of each other's pockets, they aren’t great at lying anymore. Derek knows too much about Dex to believe half of his bullshit and, well, it goes the other way too. They know each other like you know your own house in the dark. You don’t have to look or think about how to get somewhere. You just know.

“You can ask,” Dex says, back still to him. 

Three months ago, before going to Maine, Derek wouldn’t have asked. He would have been afraid of breaking whatever this is between them. He would have said no and let whatever Dex was feeling sit like a weight between them.

_ I think I was afraid _ , Dex had admitted. He had said it like it was the biggest secret he had. And maybe it is. Dex, who tries so hard to understand the world and to be able to fix everything that breaks. He is afraid, Derek realizes, of what happens when he isn’t in control.

So, Derek asks. He asks because, well, if Dex is being brave than maybe he can be, too.

“Who was that dickwad?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood. 

Dex is silent for a while. He’s silent for so long that Derek thinks, maybe, he’s fallen asleep. Derek wouldn’t blame him. Puking is exhausting, especially after playing Division I hockey. Then, Dex starts talking.

“My last foster before Mom was okay,” he begins, slowly, as if each word was a loaded gun. “I got to play almost a whole season of hockey. Had my own gear again and everything. The fosters were, you know, fosters. They were nice, I guess, but I know they didn’t really like that I kept getting into trouble.

“It was, like, the end February and some of the guys on my team invited me to play shinny out on this pond.”

Dex stops talking abruptly.

For a moment, Derek thinks he’s changed his mind, which would be fine. Like he had said before, back at the Poindexter house in Maine, Dex doesn’t have to tell him anything. He doesn’t have to, but if he wants Derek will listen.

“Wait,” Dex says, “sorry, that’s not what happened first. I’ve never told this story outside of my own head before. Let me backup. My team, the Maulers, they hated me. They called me Lynch the Bicth, or just Bitch, and they used to spit on me and shit. I hated them. This one time, they peed on my clothes while I was in the bathroom. I went home in my underwear.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. He knows that, if he stops him, Dex won’t finish. Derek doesn’t really want him to finish. Every word sounds like it hurts him. But, he’s going to be brave and listen even if it’s not something he really wants to hear. 

Dex continues, “One day, out of the blue, one of the guys waits until everyone has left practice and I’m waiting on my foster dad. He comes up to me and I thought he was going to beat the shit out of me. Instead, he apologizes. He apologizes and invites me to hang out after practice next week. 

“It was great at first. I hadn’t had friends in a while and it was nice to just hang out with someone who wanted to hang out with me. At practice, he’d ignore me. He didn’t do stupid shit to me anymore, but he didn’t act like we were friends, either. When we’d go to his house, though, we’d play video games and eat pizza rolls and all that shit that teenage boys are supposed to do.

“Then, like the lonely gay kid I was, I had to get a stupid crush on him. So, I kissed him one day and he didn’t really say anything at first, just said that his mom said it was time for me to go home. Then, like two days later, he invited me to the park to play shinny. Except, it wasn’t just him. It was some of the bigger kids on our team, too.”

Derek interrupts, he can’t help himself.

“Dex, it wasn’t your--”

“Just let me finish, okay? I gotta finish,” Dex says, almost fractically, like this was bubbling to get out of him.

Derek nodded and, even though Dex is still facing away from him, he seems to know.

“I got on the ice, ready to play, but they weren’t there to play shinny. There were no nets. They didn’t have skates, just their sticks. They beat the fucking shit out of me. Broke my eye socket, busted my jaw, took out a couple of teeth.

“When they were done and I was laying on the ice, eyes swollen shut, Hunter Pucowski leaned over to spit in my face. That was the last time I saw him or any of them. But then we were watching the tapes from the Duluth and Ohio State game and it was like I was still laying on the ice, looking up at a boy who’d let me kiss him one day and beat the shit out of me the next.”

When Dex finishes talking, his voice sounds wet.

Something seizes in Derek’s chest. It isn’t something new. It’s been there for a while, at least since last summer when a boy he pretended to hate made a ten hour road trip just because he’d been too depressed to answer a text. It might have been there longer, since they were actual Frogs and not just The Frogs and Derek saw Dex laugh, really laugh, for the first time and started to pen a poem about what he thought was going to be a disaster.

“I think you need a hug,” Derek says, forced calm. “You can, like, say no, but I’d like to give you a hug if that’s okay.”

Dex nods. He’s still facing away from Derek, curled up on top of the hotel comforter. He hasn’t moved since before Derek got out of the shower, before Ford came in the room with the team medical bag. 

Derek pushes off his own bed and covers the short distance between them. He lays down behind Dex and wraps his arms around him. Derek doesn’t stop to think that, maybe, it’s weird to spoon your roommate that you’re a little in love with. Well, he does, just for a little. He stops to think that, well, this might be pushing the boundaries of friendship. But haven’t they always been pushing each other?

Honestly, this is no different.

They lay there for a while. Derek thinks about cabinets and hockey sticks and boys you think love you but only break your heart. He has no problem with the first two, but Derek is intimately familiar with the latter. 

_ Not now _ , he thinks, unable to stop himself.  _ This boy won’t _ .

But Derek doesn’t really know whether or not Dex will break his heart. He’ll know soon enough, though. The  _ Review _ publishes his poem in less than two months. Dex wants to read it. There is no way for him to read the poem without coming to the same conclusion Derek himself came to upon finishing it. 

Derek isn’t used to optimism. He has never been the kind to think the best of things. Minor inconveniences become earth shattering disasters. It is how Derek has always been. 

_ Drama king _ , he can almost hear, in the singsong voice of a much younger Farrah. 

This, though, Derek begins the feel the lightness of something he feels hesitant to name. If he names it, perhaps, he will crush it. So, instead, he takes a leaf out of Emily Dickinson’s book.

“The thing with feathers,” he says, softly, without really meaning to.

Dex shifts slightly and asks, “What did you say?”

Derek shakes his head. He doesn’t think Dex would make fun of him for it, but he also thinks that this--well--this isn’t the time. Derek still smells a little like vomit, Dex is beginning to shiver, and right now everything is heavy. When they talk about it--to Derek, it is becoming more of a when than an if--it should be at a lighter time.

So, instead, Derek says, “Let’s kick Duluth’s ass in the finals.”

“Yeah,” Dex agrees, his voice still rough, “let’s kick their ass.”

\---

When Derek had been at Andover, there’d been a boy.

Well, there’d been more than one boy he’d proclaimed his love for, but Jamie had been the first to proclaim it back. In a small voice, just a whisper, when they were alone and it was dark and maybe, just maybe, Derek could chalk it up to his imagination. But it had been real and it had severely fucked up his senior year.

Jamie had been shorter than Derek, with dark eyes and a permanent scowl on his face. They’d met in drama class their junior year. Jamie wasn’t particularly gifted at acting. He’d been on the swim team and Derek had though he loved him. 

Still, maybe, Derek had thought that what had happened between them had been love. Like a boy who won’t hold your hand could love you. Like a boy who shoved on his shoes while you’re sleeping could love you. He’d never thought about what that might look like from the other side, not until Dex talked about that Duluth player.   
  


Derek decides he can’t think about any of this anymore.

It’s almost eleven. Dex is still sleeping, wrapped up in the thick hotel comforter, with a mountain of pillows over his head. Derek woke up hours ago, on the single pillow left on his own bed, thinking of fucking Jamie like he was eighteen again.

Except, this time, Derek could see around his stupid teenage, lovesick haze. He hadn’t loved Jamie. How could he have? He tiptoed around that boy, trying to win him over by abiding by his strange rules and regulations around their so-called relationship. No, that hadn’t been love, not really. Derek had just wanted it to be love. 

He sighs. This really isn’t helping. The championship game is in less than 36 hours and Derek’s head isn’t in it. 

But, honestly, he’d rather be worrying about his boy.

See, Derek loves hockey. He has loved hockey since he was ten years old and his nanny took him to his first game. But, Derek isn’t Jack. He isn’t looking to do this professionally. His hockey career will end with his senior year at Samwell and, really, Derek’s okay with that. Somethings have an end date, something inherently hardwired into them that always makes you anticipate its conclusion. 

This thing with Dex though? He doesn’t want it to have a conclusion.

However, Derek owes it to Bitty and his team and pretty much everyone who’s been dealing with the shit they’ve been saying about Samwell since the Stanley Cup. They have to fucking cream Duluth. And, to do that, Derek has to get out of this room and turn back on his hockey brain.

So, he does.

He showers again because, somehow, it still feels like he smells like vomit. It’s one of those smells that just sort of seeps into your nose and stays there. No amount of expensive soap that Farrah had bought him for his birthday is going to change that. He shuts the water off prematurely, with a sigh.

Derek gets dressed into his Samwell sweatpants and team jacket before leaving the bathroom. He has a vague idea of finding something to eat in the hotel and bringing it back to their room. Players are technically not allowed to leave the hotel premises, but he figures that, hey, this is Chicago and he should be able to UberEats something without gluten to the hotel lobby. If not, he could always bug Bitty. Chances are, that boy had a pie or two hidden in his room somewhere.

Before leaving the room, Derek jots a quick note on the hotel stationary on the bedside table just to let Dex know where he’s going.

_ Liam, _

_ Off to find food. Text if you wake up. _

_ -Derek _

He doesn’t stop to question his decision to start the note off like that, but he does press the pen harder into the pad of paper than is strictly necessary on the ‘m’ in Liam.

Derek ducks out of the room, shoulders hunched up against some imaginary cold. Maybe it he could still feel himself shivering in the tunnel under the bleachers last night, sweaty and shirtless and scared. If it still lingers in him, he can’t imagine how Dex is feeling. It that Duluth asshole scared him, what had it been like for Dex, looking up at someone like that?

He doesn’t have long to dwell on the thought. When he rounds the corner to the elevators, Chowder is standing there with his hands in his pockets, waiting for the down button to light up.

“Chowder!” he calls, jogging a little. Derek wants the distraction, something to think about outside of the little bubble his and Dex’s lives have somehow become. He likes that they have things just between them, yes, but Derek feels heavy with the burden of this he isn’t sure he’s allowed to say.

Chowder looks up from where he’d been staring at the elevator buttons and grins broadly. 

He smiles more, Derek has noticed, since the braces came off. However, Derek sort of misses the braces. They were so quintessentially Chowder that he still isn’t used to seeing him without them. But, Derek will adjust. 

That is something he is trying to get better at, adjusting. It is still a work in progress, but at least it is in progress at all. 

“Nursey!” Chowder says with a wave. “Ford said she told you to skip breakfast, but we missed you guys anyway. Bitty criticized the hotel pastries for twenty three and a half minutes. Hops timed it.”

“Technically,” Derek begins, “she banned Dex from breakfast. I could have gone still, if I was hungry.”

Chowder rolls his eyes and gives Derek a look. He has been giving Derek this look since at least November, maybe even earlier. This time, it’s a look at Derek thinks is supposed to mean, ‘Aren’t you always with him?’ or maybe, ‘Like you’d leave that boy, especially not when he’s sick.’

“I wasn’t hungry,” Derek protests, mostly to get Chowder to argue back. 

He needs some sense of normalcy if he wants to get back into the hockey mindset before practice ice in four hours. Chowder being exasperated about Derek and Dex is normal. Derek trying to figure out the best way to ruin a person’s hockey career and also fix his best friend’s pretty screwed up childhood isn’t. 

The elevator finally arrives with a  _ ding _ . Wordlessly, he and Chowder both enter.

Chowder pressed the lobby button and gives Derek an expectant look.

“Lobby too,” he says. “Gonna see if I can get something to eat delivered to the hotel.”

Chowder raises an eyebrow and says, “Not hungry, though?”

Derek rolls his eyes.

“It’s for Dex,” he says, without really meaning to. “He’s still sleeping, but he should probably eat something before practice.”

Chowder makes a noise of affirmation and asks, “How is Dex?”

If Derek is trying to get his mind off of the events of last night and back onto playing the best hockey of his life, this definitely isn’t going to help. But, Chowder is Dex’s friend and Derek’s, too. He wants to know how their doing.

“He’s still sleeping at 11:00,” Derek says like it answers everything because it does.

Dex is an annoyingly early raiser. He’s been like that as long as Derek’s known him. He gets up earlier than everyone else and, often, starts working on classwork or Haus repairs before Derek’s even considered entering into the world of the waking. This behavior isn’t normal. They both know it.

Chowder makes a face.

“Has he puked since Ford saw him last night?” he asks. “She told Coach Hall she thought it was either food poisoning or nerves. Well, she said stage fright, but she didn’t mean that. Why would we play hockey on a stage?”

“He hasn’t,” Derek replies evasively.

Chowder nods and says, “That’s good! Does he seem better? We were all worried about him last night, even Whiskey.”

Derek makes a dismissive sound, somewhere between a tut and an exhalation, and says, “He’s probably worried that we’ll lose if they have to bench Dex and then he won’t be the NHL first draft pick in 2019.”

He doesn’t mean to sound dismissive, but Whiskey doesn’t really know any of them. Well, except Tango and Ford. The rest of the team, though, he knows next to nothing about. He doesn’t even seem to try.

“Maybe,” Chowder says, mostly to placate Derek’s annoyance.

Derek doesn’t mind. He knows he’s being a prickly asshole. Chowder knows too. They’re both just decidedly not saying anything about it. Recently, a lot of Derek’s life has begun to feel like things he’s just decided not to say. Things about his poem, his feelings about Dex, and a whole plethora of other shit he just keeps to himself. 

He makes a mental note to worry about that later, after the championship game. 

The elevator doors open out to the lobby. 

“I’ve got to try and get the shitty hotel printer to try and spit out my combinatorics problem set,” Chowder says, exiting the elevator with a sigh. “Wish me luck.”

Derek says, “Good luck, bro, you know this place’s business center hasn’t been updated since, like, 2009.”

Over his shoulder, Chowder calls, “Pray for me.”

“I’ll try to put in a good word with the math gods,” jokes Derek.

As Chowder heads towards the business center to the right of the elevator, Derek takes a seat in one of the ugly, striped armchairs by the front door. He lazily scrolls through restaurants on UberEats, looking for something that is gluten free and he knows Dex likes. Finding something at fulfills both criteria and also delivers to the Hilton is more challenging than it should be.

Eventually, he settles on a Thai place and orders them both pad thai because, well, it will be here the quickest and Derek has actually sceen Dex eat it before. 

After placing the order, Derek tips his head back against the scratchy fabric of the chair. He closes his eyes. His eyelids feel gritty, like someone has thrown sand towards him and he didn’t blink before the particles hit him. It is probably the lack of sleep, he know, making his eyes ache and his brain fuzzy. 

Derek had not fallen asleep until well after three in the morning. He had waited a long time, until Dex’s breathing had evened out and the stillness in the room felt less precarious than it had in quite a while, before he extricated himself from Dex’s bed and returned to his own. Then, he had spent much too long thinking about everything than could possibly be healthy. 

He is tired, but there is no time for rest. The next thirty or so hours would be constant motion, the hectic blur of game day amplified by a thousand. Derek would take the last few minutes that he could afford to close his eyes and still his brain and just be.

In the intervening minutes, Derek might have fallen asleep. He might have dozed for a while in the comforting blackness and emptiness of an unexpected nap. He also might have just let his mind wander, growing foggy enough that it simply felt like he fell asleep. Derek will never really know.

But, when he wakes up to his phone telling him that  _ Robin _ has his order in the gray sedan out front, he feels rested. 

\---

Their practice isn’t perfect. 

Chowder is antsy, his hands light and more unsure than Derek has ever seen them on his hockey stick. He misses a puck for every two that he saves and, around the hour and a half mark, his frustration becomes almost tangible.

Bitty is nervous and, when Bittty is nervous, he gets stern. He yells more in practice than Derek has heard him yell in the last three years combined, other than during jam related arguments. He wants to prove himself, Derek knows this, but the yelling is unsettling the Waffles.

On the bench, Bully rocks forward and back, helmet held tightly between his white-knuckled hands. Against his better judgement and inspite of Coach Hall tell him not to, Bully has taken his gloves off. 

Derek thinks there is something to say about this moment. It holds all this potential but, come tomorrow evening, it could mean nothing. Right now, if he stops to think about it, he can imagine them winning. Right now, it’s the truth. They could win, be NCAA champions, and there is so much possibility that it almost hurts.

Tomorrow is a different story. After the game, there is no maybe there is just the reality of how they played and how the other team played and what calls the referee made and a thousand other possibilities that the Derek of today doesn’t need to think about. Because today, as they run their last play, Dex passes the puck his way and Derek passes it to Bitty and Bitty scores and it feels like they’re going to win.

Dex smiles at him awkwardly around his mouthguard and, really, it shouldn’t be cute. They all have stupid playoff mullets and scruffy faces. Dex has sweat dripping into his eyes and there’s spit running down his chin from trying to smile with his mouthguard in. It shouldn't be cute, but it is.

The thought that’s been percolating all afternoon land in the forefront of his brain and it takes all of Derek’s strength not to say what he’s thinking.

Instead, he simply thinks it harder.

_ We’ve got this _ , he thinks.  _ We’re going to win _ . 

Derek has no evidence to support this. Duluth has a better record than them. It’s their fifth time in the Frozen Four and their third in the championship game. Samwell has been doing well recently, but prior to Jack they’d never even made it to the Frozen Four. There is no reason for Derek to believe they’ll win.

He watches Wicks and Ollie do a complicated handshake as they exit the ice, headed back to the locker room to they can change back into their warmups and get something to eat. Behind him, Dex has an arm around Chowder’s shoulder and is giving him so encouragement about his less than stellar save-rate during practice. Dex still looks pale and tired, but the fact that he’s taken the initiative to talk to anyone when he’s been scary quiet since the Frozen Four started is more than a little reassuring.

Derek takes off his left glove. He leans over, lets his fingertips barely brush the ice, then brings them up to his lips.

It’s a little premature to be kissing the ice, sure, but he feels the assurity of their victory in the very hollow of his bones. 

Samwell is going to win tomorrow night.

\---

The game is not going well.

It’s nearly the end of the first. Duluth is up by one and they’re playing mean. They hit hard, which is fine, Derek had expected that. One of the forwards slammed into him less than a minute into the game and Derek heard something pop in his shoulder. Luckily, nothing seemed broken and the asshat who’d hit him ended up in the box.

And, yeah, Derek’s been hit a couple other times. So has nearly everyone else in the game. Wicks has a fat lip and Hops will probably have a nasty bruise from their center. But, mostly Duluth seems to be taking it out on Bitty.

They must have heard that the Samwell captain struggled with checking, that he was afraid of getting hit. What they don’t know, through, is Bitty isn’t afraid anymore. He hasn’t been afraid in a long time. Sure, he winces after every collusion with one of Duluth’s D-Men, but he doesn’t flinch away from them anymore. 

_ A necessary evil _ , Derek thinks, chewing on his mouth guard.

To his left, Dex glides slowly to a stop. The puck is, for once, on Duluth’s end of the ice. They have a moment to breathe, collect themselves, and get ready. It’s been a fast game, the kind that seem to pass in the blink of an eye, and the puck is hard to follow even on the ice.

Suddenly, Duluth’s left wing comes barreling down the ice, puck ahead of him, right towards Dex. Without a look between them, they fall into formation. Dex skates ahead, to fend off the wing man, and Derek backs up to protect Chowder and the net.

They stop the puck, but it’s an ugly stop. The wing man nearly bowls Dex over and Derek ends up dangerously close to toppling over Duluth’s center. But they stop it and the buzzer sounds and Derek finds himself letting out a sigh of relief. They’ve made it through the first period, barely, and they’re only one point behind.

The wing man who nearly knocked Dex over rams his shoulder into Dex’s and says, “Way to go, Lynch the Bitch.”

It’s the player from the tunnel the other day, the one who’d been an asshole to Dex as a kid and beat the shit out of him.

Derek bites back a retort. He has to stay focused on the game. He knows this dickwad is just trying to fuck with them, with Dex specifically, but that doesn’t make his asshaterry any easier to swallow. 

No, Derel decided, the hits aren’t really the problem.

“Fuck those assholes,” Derek says, spitting his mouthguard out.

Next to him, Dex looks pale, but determined. He starts to skate towards the boards, following the swell of the rest of the players making a beeline for the locker room. 

And Derek, he follows Dex, like there was ever any doubt in that,

“We’re going to kick their asses,” Dex says, wrapping his arm around Derek’s shoulder as the step off the ice.

Derek leans in to the warmth of the contact between them and replies, “Yeah, we are.”

\---

It’s the middle third period and Samwell is up by two. They’re fighting for every point they get, but they’re scoring and that means that they might just actually pull this off. The thought is light and fluttery in Derek’s chest. He does his best to squash it. Thoughts like that do not win NCAA Championships.

Down the ice, that fucking asshole Pucowski has the puck. Whiskey is on his tail, fighting for the puck. They’ve been at it most of the game, scrabbling over the puck, bumbling shoulders in a way that the referees decided are “good checks.” Even from across the ice, Derek can tell that Whiskey is growing annoyed with the situation. 

  
Derek glides backwards so he can hiss to Chowder, “What crawled up Whiskey’s ass and died?”

Chowder glares at him from behind the slit-like holes of the goalie mask.

Derek shrugs and says, “He’s pissed off about something.”

“The same thing that’s been pissing us all off this whole game,” Chowder replies without moving his head, his eyes still tracking the puck.

Derek’s eyes slide towards Dex without really meaning to.

During the last period and a half, Duluth has gotten meaner. The insults have spread from the mouth of Pucowski to the other forwards, directed towards anyone within speaking distance. But never anywhere near the ref, because that would be easy and nothing about this game has been easy.

With a sigh, Derek drifts back to his position.

He wants this game to be over. He wants off this godforsaken ice and as far away from Duluth as possible. If they make it through their game, whether they win or lose, Derek is never voluntarily going to step foot in Minnesota again because fuck that place and the people who play hockey in it.

Down the ice, there is the sound of sticks slapping together. It is aloud sound, but not surprising. The ice is full of the sounds of sticks hitting each other, boards, or pucks. It is full of the shouts of the people in the stands, the yells of coaches to just get the puck and get it in the net already, and most importantly the sound of blades on ice.

Derek loves the sound of skates on the ice. When it is quiet, early in the morning, the slight, nearly nonexistent sound of the blades cutting through the ice is melodic. It makes a soft  _ shink, shink _ sound with each stroke forward.

During a game, though, it is almost deafening. The sound of blades cutting through the top layer of ice isn’t relaxing anymore, it’s stressful. It becomes less of a soft sound and more of an urgent sounding, a bit like ripping fabric. Derek doesn’t hate it, how could he, when hockey has been his life for almost fifteen years, but it does make his shoulders rise up in defence/

For a moment, after the sticks slapping, there is a strange silence that falls over the ice. Derek would not be able to explain it, after, but somehow he knew something was going to happen. Maybe it was hyper awareness or deja vu or work of god, but he knew something was about to go down on Duluth’s end of the ice. 

Prior to this moment, Derek didn’t know that dropping a hockey glove on the ice could make an audible sound. But, somehow from across the ice, it did. He heard the glove hit the ground before he heard the punch make contact with Hunter Pucowski’s face.

Next to him Dex stops, completely still. 

Behind him Chowder raises his mask, squints his eyes and asks, “Did Whiskey hit that asshole?”

Derek blinks. Whiskey, who didn’t even seem to like the team, had dropped his gloves and rammed a fist into the Duluth forward’s face. Derek had not seen it happen, he’d been too far away, but there is Connor Whisk being held back by Bitty and Tango as the ref tries to cool down the situation.

The next few moments are complete pandemonium. Fighting is completely against the rules of NCAA hockey. It rarely happens as a result. Frankly, Derek has never had it happen during one of his games. Sure, there are bad checks and Dartmouth plays a dirty game most games, but no one drops gloves.

When Derek had been a freshman, before he and Dex were anything near friends, he’d made the mistake of assuming that Dex would be the first one to drop gloves. He’d said as much to Chowder, back when they were barely friends.

“Why do you think Dex would fight?” Chowder had asked, nearly three years ago, confused.

Derek had shrugged and said, “Seems like the sort. Angry, always yelling, kind of an asshole.”

At that point, he’d flashed a smile, like he hadn’t just said something awful. Derek used to do that a lot, smile his way out of feeling guilty for the things he’d say about Dex.

Chowder just replied, “I don’t think he’d do that. He cares a lot about hockey, you know, wouldn’t want to miss a game.”

Down the ice, Samwell’s top scorer is being ushered to the bench. Meanwhile, Bitty is frantically signalling to Coach Hall to call a timeout. They have less than ten minutes left of game play left and they’re down one of their first string forwards. 

Eventually, Coach Hall relents and calls timeout. Derek breathes a sigh of relief. They have a minute to recollect themselves. It’s not a lot, but at least it is something.

When they all make it over to the boards, Bitty starts in on them.

“Good lord,” he begins, shaking his head, “what has gotten in to you all? We just talked about this after second period. Ignore them, especially number 38 because he’s an asshole. Were any of you listening to me?”

Tango begins, “But Bitty, he was saying--”

Bitty cuts him off, “I don’t care what he was saying, Tango. You all know better, especially you, Whiskey.”

From behind the boards, Whiskey says nothing. His helmet is in his hands, head hung low. The refs had banned him from the rest of the games, as rules demand, and from the first game of next season. It’s a hard thought to handle for any of them.

“Really?” Bitty huffs, hand on hip. “You have nothing to say about all of this?”

Whiskey’s silence is the only answer.

“Fine,” Bitty says, shortly. “Louis, you’re in. If any of you so much as think about making even a questionable check against Duluth I am banning you from all baked goods.”

Tango asks, “What about dining hall desserts?”

“All. Baked. Goods,” he replies with a tone of icy sternness.

Ford taps her wrist, the signal that they have less than fifteen seconds left of the timeout. Bitty nods in her direction.

“Go, get to your lines,” Bitty says. “Focus on the game ahead. One more game.”

The rest of the time chants back, “One more game.”

As Derek turns to return to his line, he hears a low but firm, “Nurse,” from the benches.

Whiskey is looking up at him, expression even. Derek can’t name a single one-on-one conversation he has ever had with Whiskey. They just don’t hang out, not like he does with Chowder and Bitty and even the Eggos.

“Yeah?” Derek replies. He doesn’t know what Whiskey is about to say. Part of him doesn’t want to hear it. He needs to get back to his line, get ready for the rest of this game. But, he’s going to listen. If Whiskey is bothering to address him when he stayed silent under Bitty’s inquiry, then there must be a reason for it.

“He said that we’re all a cocksucking pussies who only got this far because our captain is screwing Jack Zimmermann,” Whiskey says, in a surprisingly even voice. 

Derek feels his blood boil and he opens his mouth to reply, but the sharp whistle ending their timeout sounds, effectively cutting short any reply he had.

Whiskey looks him in the eye and says, “Kick their fucking asses.”

He nods once in reply and stakes too his line too join Dex and Chowder.

“What did Whiskey want?” Dex asks, eyes on where the referee is about to drop the puck.

Derek chews his words for a moment before replying, “Asked us to kick their fucking asses.”

It isn’t a lie, perse, but Derek knows that Dex’s ability to handle Pucowski’s bullshit is compromised and they have a game to win. So, he leaves out the first bit. It isn’t anything different from the shit the Duluth forward was saying in the tunnel the other day. He has no new material, just the old fall back of blatant homophobia and accusations of nepotism.

Dex nods and says, “Then let’s do that, huh?”

The puck drops.

_ Let’s do that _ , Derek thinks.

\---

They do.

\---

After--not after they win the game or after they have a very late celebration dinner or even after they maybe sneak a bottle or two of champagne into their hotel rooms--but just after everything has lulled to a stop and it’s probably five in the morning, Derek turns to Dex and says, “We’re going to be awesome, you know?”

Dex, who is more awake than anyone who's been up for more than twenty-four hours has the right to be, looks up from his phone. He is standing in the narrow space between their hotel beds in pajama pants with little cartoon moose fishing on them and Derek has never been so in love with anything.

Dex had just turned his phone back on and the messages had been coming in from his mother and sister. Just a moment ago, he’d read one aloud to Derek from Miley about how she couldn’t wait to talk to them in the morning about the game. At the word ‘them,’ Derek found his heart fluttering into his throat at that. He’s never been considered a part of something like this before, a member of a plural pronoun.

Them.

It sounded nice.

So, Derek says again, “We’re going to be awesome.”

Dex gives him a look. They’re both sober at this point because it was two bottles of champagne and a lot of Wellies. Everyone had half a glass, maybe, while staring in disbelief at the trophy on the floor of Bitty’s room.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dex says, letting the hand holding his phone drop to his side. His eyebrows are knit together, his lips pursed, but he doesn’t seem worried. It almost looks like he’s biting back a smile or something.

Derek says, “I think you do,” because he’s never been in love before and he doesn’t know how to say it.

Sure, he can think all of the poetic things he wants in his head. He can compare Dex’s to the stars, to sunflowers, to the personification of hope itself, but he doesn’t know if he can say it. At least, maybe not now.

Dex lowers himself to sit at the end of Derek’s bed. He sets his phone on the comforter next to him, then folds his hands in his lap. He digs at the corners of his nails, intently focused.

They’re both silent for a moment. Derek finds the silence comfortable. They have time. There is no rush. This is going to happen.

Derek doesn’t really know how he knows, but he does. This thing between them is going to last a long time. He can feel it. There is surety in it, a kind of guarantee Derek has only ever felt about his ability to write.

“What if I’m wrong?” Dex asks finally, looking over at Derek from under his overgrown bangs. 

Derek lets out a hum and stretches out until his toe pokes Dex in the thigh under the cover.

“You’re not,” he says. Derek couldn’t explain how he knows that Dex feels the same way about him, but he does. Maybe it was the secrets or the trip to Maine or getting puked on. Derek doesn’t know. But he does know that Dex is going to love him, he just does.

Dex huffs, “Well, what if  _ you’re _ wrong.”

Derek thinks Dex is trying to chirp him, but it isn’t working. It definitely feels a hell of a lot more like flirting. Which, to be fair, they might have been doing for a long time now. 

Derek raises an eyebrow and asks, “Am I?”

Dex tries to keep sulking, but he’s failing at it. He’s sort of smiling, turned into his shoulder, like he does when he doesn’t want you to know he’s smiling. 

“You’re not,” he says, looking straight at Derek. 

His hair is long, longer than Derek has ever seen it before. It falls into his eyes and curls at the nape of his neck. There are still deep purple bags under his eyes from the sleepless nights of the past few weeks. For all intents and purposes, he looks awful. He could be cast as an in a zombie movie, with his shaggy and sweaty hair coupled with his sunken eyes. But Derek doesn’t see that. Derek sees the multitudes of Dex’s he’s had the privilege of meeting since last summer.

He thinks about the boy who rang his doorbell back in June, unsure and stubborn. He thiinks about Dex, holding a cup of bodega coffee, saying, “They used to lock the cabinets.” He sees apology cookies, coffee at Annie’s, a trip to Maine he didn’t ask for but desperately needed. He sees Dex, laughing with his sister, over cards on Christmas. 

“Well then Liam,” he says, resting his head on his hand to get a better look at him, “I think we’re going to be amazing.”

“I think so, too.”

\---

Things don’t change.

Or maybe they do.

“What the hell, you guys,” Chowder says one morning, walking in to the Haus living room. 

It is the middle of May. It’s Dead Week, the week between the end of classes and before the start of finals, and he and Liam are watching The Great British Bake Off on Derek’s laptop. It’s been a stressful episode. Someone overproffed their bread and Mary is fit to kill. 

Liam hits pause and looks up, “Hey, Chowder. Want to watch? We’ve got, like, four more episodes to the finale.”

“It’s bread week,” Derek adds, patting the spot on the couch to his right.

They’re huddled under the throw blanket Bitty keeps on the back of the couch, shoulders pressed together. They had been watching upstairs in their room, but Liam had wanted coffee and Derek wanted some of the leftover pecan pie that he’d hid in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator to fend off potential thieves. 

Chowder throws up his hands.

“I give up, I thought Bitty was exaggerating but I give up,” Chowder says with exasperation. “Cuddling on the couch watching cooking shows.”

“Baking shows,” Derek replies automatically.

Beside him, Liam rests his chin on Derek’s shoulder to get a better look at Chowder. His face is inches from Derek’s. Before, when Derek wasn’t sure, this would have made him nervous and excited all at the same time. But he’s sure now and it doesn’t make feel either. Sitting on the couch, Liam pressing into his side, just feels blissfully normal.

Chowder sighs, but sits down next to him anyway.

Liam presses the spacebar on Derek’s computer and the episode starts up again. 

Mary is taking small bites of Steven’s ugly, over proofed bread. She chews it for a moment before she says, “Not terribly good, is it?”

They watch the episode and the next three in relative silence. Sometimes, Derek criticizes the bakers’ techniques because he knows it annoys the shit out of Liam. Liam usually chirps back about Derek’s lack of culinary ability, which turns into a joke about Liam’s love of food that his stomach can’t digest.

Next to him, Chowder says, “Disgusting. I hate all of this and I wish you still hated each other.”

He’s joking, Derek knows this. He’s faking annoyance, but he’s smiling a little in the corners of his mouth. 

“You don’t,” Liam says, matter of fact and sure like Derek is sure.

The thought makes the hollow of his chest feel like it is full of helium, lighter than air, rising. The assiduity of it all is enough to make Derek dizzy. To think, here is a boy who likes him--maybe loves him, but that feels a little too forward thinking for the moment--and knows that Derek loves him. 

Or, he knows close enough. Maybe Derek hasn’t said anything about liking and loving quite yet. They have time. He can wait to make a stupidly romantic gesture. 

Derek smirks at Chowder and says, “You think we’re adorable.”

“Because we are,” Liam chimes in, digging his chin into Derek’s shoulder. 

Chowder whacks Liam in the face with one of the Bitty’s decorative throw pillows and jabs an elbow into Derek’s side. There is a brief, childish wrestling match between the three of them that ends with Liam tangled tangled in the blanket, Derek’s laptop on the floor, and Chowder’s bony ass digging in to Derek’s back. It is the kind of Frog shit they haven’t really done all year, but without the hostility that used to bubble just beneath the surface because Derek didn’t understand Liam and Liam was kind of a rightfully defensive asshole.

  
“We’re almost seniors,” Chowder says, still sitting on top of Derek.

Liam struggles to extricate himself from the blanket, but mostly fails. From inside the folds of the plush fabric, comes a muffled, “Banquet’s tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, shoving Chowder off top of him.

They haven’t really been talking about the banquet, or captaincy, or the departure of Bitty. They hang heavy in the air, unsaid. It’s not like they aren’t all thinking about it, the pressure of being seniors as reigning NCAA Champions, or how empty the Haus will feel with Tango in Bitty’s old room and Tango in the attic and the kitchen missing the constant stream of baked goods. The idea is unfathomable to Derek, but it will happen whether he can fathom it or not.

“I wish goalies could be captains,” Liam says, finally managing to free himself from the confines of the blanket. “You’re obviously the best choice, Chowder.”

He shoots Derek an apologetic look and says, “No offense, dude.”

“None taken,” Derek says. “I don’t want to be captain.”

Both Liam and Chowder shoot him a confused look, but it’s the truth. Derek doesn’t want to be captain. He wants to play, yes, but he’s not looking for NHL prospects. He’s looking into MFA programs in poetry and artist in residence positions. He’s okay with next year being the end of his competitive hockey career. Not that he won’t play shinny every once and a while or pull a Jack and coach a Pee Wee team, but he’s not looking for the Stanley Cup. 

He looks over at Liam and smiles.

He has everything he wants right here.

\---

The banquet is emotional. Derek may or may not cry. Bitty definitely cries, but Derek isn’t going to judge him for that. He knows that he’s going to bawl like a baby next year. 

Liam walks out of the banquet in a daze, holding the ‘C’ lightly in his hand. When Coach Hall called out his name, he’s dropped his fork on the floor.

Derek throws an arm over his shoulder and reaches over to ruffle his hair. Liam has since cut it a little, but it’s still longer than Derek has ever seen him keep it. It looks good, curling down the nape of his neck.

“Derek, quit it,” Liam says without much heat. He makes a halfhearted show of trying to shove Derek away, but gives up halfway through and reaches up to hold the hand resting on his shoulder instead.

The walk in silence for a moment, vaguely in the direction of the Haus. The rest of the team had split off to start studying for finals or, in Bitty’s case, to take the train to Providence to hang out with his boyfriend. Derek and Liam had, without talking about it, headed in the same direction.

“You’re going to be a great captain,” Derek says, breaking the silence.

Liam just says, “You would have been better.”

And Derek can hear that Liam means it, but the idea is strange to him. They’ve never really talked about it, but Derek knows Liam is looking into NHL prospects. He’s never said it, but Derek has seen him looking at expansion teams on his phone. Being captain will help Liam’s odds of being scouted. Derek doesn’t need those odds. He’d gladly give them to his boy.

“There’s no chill in captaincy,” Derek says, hip checking Liam and causing them both to stumble off the curb.

Liam laughs and, even though Derek’s arm slipped off his shoulder when they tripped off the curb, they’re still holding hands. It’s easy and simple and Derek thinks he could get used to life being like this.

“I wrote a poem about you,” he says, because the Samwell Review publication event is the day before graduation and Derek had promised that Liam could read it nearly six months ago.

Liam rolls his eyes and says, “Is it another one about how my ears are bigger than Dumbo’s?”

Derek makes a face. He’d forgotten about that. 

When they were frogs, not Frogs, Derek was pissed at Liam for--well, he can’t really remember why, but they were both so angry back then--and wrote a limerick about how big Liam’s ears were. It was mean, but Derek had thought it was hilarious at the time. 

God, what would eighteen year old Derek think of this moment, right now, his hand being held by William Poindexter?

He’d probably laugh his ass off, but Derek doesn’t care.

“No,” Derek says, “the poem that’s being published. Is already published? I don’t know if the books are done being printed yet.”

“Oh,” says Liam, thoughtful.

They walk a little long, the silence less comfortable this time. Derek can feel the wait of it. He knows he should have said something sooner, but he was afraid and unsure then. He isn’t now, but when you’ve said nothing for so long, the silence becomes harder to break.

Eventually, Liam asks, “Is it a love poem?”

Derek lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Yes.”

Liam moves to intertwine his fingers with Derek’s and says, “Then don’t you think you should, I don’t know, ask me out before publishing a poem about your undying love for me?”

“I never said undying,” Derek says, even though dangerous words like ‘after graduation’ and ‘forever’ have been dancing around his head since Maine. “And you could always ask me out, asshole.”

Liam squeezes Derek’s fingers and says, “Fine, maybe I will.”

“Fine.”

They stop walking. Liam turns around to face Derek, tugging on his hand. Derek stumbles forward, knocking his forehead against Liam’s. They both laugh, a little breathlessly, and Liam reaches up to grab at the collar of Derek’s suit jacket.

“Annie’s, right now,” Liam says.

He pulls Derek into a kiss. It is short and quick, but reeks of possibility.

Derek says, “Yeah, okay.”

\---

_ You don’t know anything about me.  _ A boy

With honeysuckle eyes says. His

Hands are fists, his shoulders 

Squared, teeth clenched.

But I do.

Another boy, sky-eyed 

And soft-handed. Angry.

Shoving his feet into black boots,

_ This doesn’t mean anything. _

They say history repeats itself until

You learn. One look at his split

Lip and--

_ Oh no, here we go again,  _

_ A boy afraid of loving other boys. _

I know what we are--

A preemptive disaster. His face, a map

To places I’ve already been:

Dark rooms that bite

Hushed voices with sharp claws.

Except, beauty, from his shaking

Hands--

A stair that no longer creaks

A lock unstuck

Warm butterscotch.

Oversummer, 

After sun-stained skin fades

three small freckles high on his cheekbone--

a new road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem at the end is my best attempt at writing Nursey's poetry. I tried my best.


End file.
